In this joyless era of return of capital, people are keen to let banks hold their money for nothing. Increasingly, though, banks can ill afford that seemingly heads-I-win, tails-you-lose proposition.
On Thursday, the ECB took its benchmark rate down to a record low of 0.75 percent and its deposit rate to zero. JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Blackrock responded not by lapping up supposedly free investor cash—but by closing their European money market funds to new investments.
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