I'm not certain if I have ever forwarded anything from Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel economist and professor at Columbia. Generally, he and I don't agree on a lot of things.

So I was more than mildly surprised when I saw this short essay from him at Project Syndicate, talking about the deleterious effects of negative interest rates, something with which I wholeheartedly agree. A relatively short read, but this one packs a lot of punch.

And Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's Minister of finance, would generally agree with him; and he has been very critical of late about the ECB and negative rates. He basically attributed the recent spanking that his political party took in Bavarian regional elections to ECB policies, saying (quoting from Dennis Gartman):

[We] Can attribute 50 per cent of the results of a party that seems to be new and successful in Germany to the design of this policy.... There is a growing understanding that excessive liquidity has become more a cause than a solution to the problem.

Schäuble is of course talking about the rise of the AfD ... the Alternative for Deutschland ... in recent local and state elections in Germany. And Mr. Schäuble is not alone in expressing his political and economic concerns. The Transport Minister, Mr. Alexander Dobrint, who is a leader of the CSU... the CDU's “sister” party in Bavaria... said in an interview with Die Welt that

The ECB is following a very risky course. The disappearance of interest rates creates a gaping hole in citizen's old age preparations.

The ECB’s leadership has returned fire to the Germans, although the not yet from Mr. Draghi. The Bank's Chief Economist, Mr. Peter Praet, said that the criticism from the Germans … is “hard to swallow.”