In a world of near-zero inflation, nominal prices are more likely to need to fall.

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Accordingly, a private replacement for Social Security would have to take the form of a fully-inflation-indexed annuity with zero risk of default.

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With nominal rates at zero, and core consumer-price inflation at 0.5%, you are still paid to borrow.

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Various rules have been proposed, including a price-level rule (zero inflation), an inflation target rule (2 percent inflation), a nominal GDP target, and a Taylor rule designed to control the growth of nominal income by controlling the monetary base.

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Bet against inflation by way of zero-coupon long Treasury bonds?

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The Bank of England's central projection is that house-price inflation will subside to zero by the end of 2004.

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There are a number of good reasons to think the optimal long-run inflation rate is close to zero.

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Real after-inflation interest rates are close to zero.

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When has the world known straight-line peace, prosperity, full employment, zero inflation and continuous growth?

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The Federal Reserve Board needs to hold money-market rates next to zero, minus zero adjusted for inflation.

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Any inflation rate greater than zero means there is too much money chasing too few goods, which means the Fed should not be injecting new high-powered money if it wants to have price stability (zero inflation).

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Last month the Fed said that as long as inflation remained modest, it could keep short-term rates near zero until the unemployment rate dips below 6.5 percent from the current 7.8 percent.

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Real short-term interest rates in Japan (ie, adjusted for inflation) are zero or even slightly negative.

ECONOMIST: Japan

Go out to 10-year Treasuries and the inflation adjusted rate of return currently is a flat zero.

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The Bank of Japan has promised that it will stick with its current policy of zero interest rates and quantitative monetary easing (basically, printing money) until consumer-price inflation has been positive for several months and is expected to remain positive.

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Net of inflation and net of taxes, that's awfully close to zero real after-tax return.

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