Money is a store of value, quoth the obsolete textbooks. Post-Lehman, money is rather an instrument of public policy. In the past seven years central banks have conjured more than $10tn of digital wampum. Still, prosperity eludes them.
The juxtaposition between clouds of electronic scrip on the one hand, and ultra-low bond yields on the other, is the financial non sequitur of 2015. If it does not concern the stewards of capital today, it may torment them tomorrow.
The year just ended was the year of the bond. Clinking glasses, investors toasted plunging interest rates and the prospect of monetary stimulus by the European Central Bank. They did not give much thought to the nature of the money in which they hope to be repaid.