Perhaps the most interesting thing here is that the central banks are the overwhelming buyers of the negative yielding bonds. Is that any different from printing new fiat currency to pay one’s debt (ie ‘monetizing’ the debt)? Countries have tried that over and over in history and inflation is the typical result. However, we are not seeing the same impacts from inflation in the major economies today (at least, assuming official measures of price indices are to be believed). To me that begs the question of whether CPI and similar indices are poor measures of inflation today. Otherwise are we supposed to believe the government can continue to monetize its debt without consequence? Isn’t fiat currency just an invention to act as a medium of exchange and which eliminates the ‘want of coincidence’ issue that bartering carries? Can we have our cake and eat it too?