So! Lots of signs of the apocalypse to choose from today. The Dow is down over almost 3%. The 10-year is yielding under 2.5%. Europe is sucking more countries into the vortex. Even gold is down somehow. Most ominously of all, Dealbreaker has been down all morning and afternoon, for reasons that are not clear to us but that we’re going to blame on interference from LightSquared anyway.

But our favorite harbinger of doom has to be the WSJ’s report that Bank of New York Mellon is now paying (0.13%) interest on large deposits – that is, if you want them to watch your money for you (and you’ve got over $50mm), you pay them 13bps. Negative rates on short-dated Treasuries are back, and negative real interest rates have been pretty common recently, but negative rates on large bank deposits are new to us. (Or not new exactly, since lots of people have fee checking accounts, but most of them don’t have $50 million in the bank.) Continue reading »