> When during the past decade have eurozone real short rates been subzero?
During the late 1990s, when the ECB finally took charge. Here are short-term interest rates minus inflation and per capita growth for the Euro area, US and Japan:
Euro Zone US Japan 1995 +2.4 +0.9 +0.4 1996 +1.7 -0.3 -2.9 1997 +0.8 -1.0 -2.8 1998 +0.5 -0.4 +0.8 1999 -0.2 -0.8 -0.8 2000 -1.3 -1.0 -1.2
Current EU rates are some of the lowest in these terms since the Golden Age of the 1960s, when the US figure averaged -1.8 from 1960 to 1979, before rising to +2.9 in the monetarist 1980s, and then falling to +0.6% in 1990-99.
-- Dennis