Interest Rates go Negative: Compare Riksbank (Sweden) with our Federal Reserve – David Kotok, Chairman & Chief Investment Officer – Negative nominal interest rates are very hard to understand intuitively.  That said, we now have a central bank using them. … Sweden’s reserve deposit rate was set a -0.25%.  That’s right.  A negative interest rate is now at work in one of the G-10 countries.  This rate means a penalty is charged against a deposit placed in the central bank under the reserve deposit rules.  The banking institution that deposits with its central bank will receive an actual deduction from the deposit account.  It will get back less money than it puts in. – Cumberland Advisors

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US lurching towards ‘debt explosion’ with long-term interest rates on course to double - By Philip Aldrick, Banking Editor – The US economy is lurching towards crisis with long-term interest rates on course to double, crippling the country’s ability to pay its debts and potentially plunging it into another recession, according to a study by the US’s own central bank – Telegraph.co.uk

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Is this the beginning of another big market decline? – Scott Grannis – Markets are in a tizzy of late, as the assets that rose in price from early March through early June now head south (e.g., equities, oil, gold). Treasury bond prices are doing just the opposite, a natural reaction from a market that views economic weakness as a source of deflationary pressures. Hopes of a recovery are now being called into question. Governments are threatening to pile on more regulations and more taxes in an effort to fix the mess. These are times that try men’s souls, especially those who are optimistic. – good reading – Calafia Beach Pundit

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BofA, JPMorgan move cardholders to variable rates – By Jonathan Stempel – Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) are switching some customers who have fixed-rate credit cards to potentially higher variable rates, acting before a new law takes effect that limits what card issuers can charge.   The largest U.S. banks, which are also the largest card issuers, plan to tie more cardholders’ rates to the prime rate, a benchmark that is traditionally 3 percentage points above the Federal Reserve’s key lending rate, the federal funds rate. – Reuters