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When the European Central Bank meets in March, markets anticipate that it will cut its already negative deposit rate further, deepening Europe’s multi-year experiment with sub-zero interest rates, which began in June 2014.

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The ECB currently charges banks to park money with it as part of a policy where the official deposit rate is set at -0.3 per cent. In a normal interest rate environment, it would be paying banks that leave their money in its vaults. Three other countries — Denmark Sweden and Switzerland — now flirt with deposit rates as low as -0.5 per cent.

The experiment in Europe is being closely watched around the world, including by policymakers here in Canada. Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz discussed negative rates at a luncheon in Toronto last month, putting it on the radar here. While he said that addressing negative rates was no indication the bank planned to use them, it nevertheless shows that Poloz and his team are weighing all options as the economy struggles to grow.