Business & Economics: June 2014 Archives
A brilliant new double-decker armrest design may be able to reduce arm contention between seat neighbors!
And airlines will be able to squeeze more people into the same space, which could save passengers money.
If airlines make our lives truly terrible, they may give us the Paperclip as consolation. Some are thinking about putting 10 seats in each row of the Boeing 777 where today there are nine, Robert Mann, an airline industry analyst said, which would bring in huge economic benefits. "If this sort of feature were to facilitate that without detracting from the customer experience," it would be worthwhile.
In an effort to spur lending the European Central Bank has introduced negative interest rates for bank deposits. Although it sounds strange, there's no reason that interest rates can't go negative -- in fact, negative interest rates are basically the same thing as traditional inflation. Spend (or lend) the money now because you'll have less in the future.
It cut its deposit rate for banks from zero to -0.1%, to encourage banks to lend to businesses rather than hold on to money.The ECB is the first major central bank to introduce negative interest rates.
Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight said: "Despite being widely anticipated and in some quarters criticised for occurring too late, it is still a bold and unusual move by the ECB to take its deposit rate into negative territory."
"There has to be considerable uncertainty as to how effective negative deposit rates will turn out to be," he added.
It has been tried before in smaller economies. Sweden and Denmark, who are both outside the Single Currency, attempted to use negative rates in recent years with mixed results.
Analysts said in Sweden it had little discernible impact; in Denmark it did have the effect of lowering the value of the currency, the Krone, but according to the Danish Banking Association it also hit the banks' bottom line profits.
Here's some more about what a negative interest rate even means.
