Enduringly low short-term interest rates have a completely different effect to temporarily low short-term interest rates
In the past, central banks (we look at the Federal Reserve as well as the Bundesbank and then the ECB) conducted temporarily expansionary monetary policies: in recessions, short-term interest rates were low but yield curves remained steep , which boosted both demand and banks’ profits. Today, central banks have conduct ed expansionary monetary policies for a long time : yield curves have therefore become very flat, which drives down banks’ profits (1) and may bring about a contraction in credit supply, leading to a contraction and not an expansion in demand. The danger is that monetary policies may lose their effectiveness when they remain expansionary for too long. See for example: G.B. Eggertsson, R.E. Juelsrud, E. Getz Wold (2017) “Are Negative Nominal Interest Rates Expansionary?†NBER Working Paper no. 24039, November G.B. Eggertsson, R.E. Juelsrud, L.H. Summers, E. Getz Wold (2019) “Negative Nominal Interest Rates and the Bank Lending Channel†NBER Working Paper no. 25416, January