White House Unveils Negative Rate Bureau to Pay Americans for Taking Out Loans
The new agency will mail bonus checks to anyone who signs a mortgage, in what officials call the fastest way to get rates 'below anything the Fed ever imagined.'
The newly formed Negative Rate Bureau opened its doors this week with a single mission: prove that interest rates can, in fact, go below zero, and that someone should be paid for the privilege of borrowing money.
Under the bureau's plan, anyone who takes out a car loan, a mortgage, or a small business line of credit will receive a bonus check in the mail, delivered by a courier the bureau describes only as 'a guy named Gary.' Officials say the checks are not interest, not a subsidy, and not, technically, money that exists yet.
'We came together as one bureau, indebted,' said a spokesperson, before excusing themselves to attend a subcommittee meeting about whether the bureau itself qualifies for its own bonus checks.
The bureau's founding charter reportedly consists of a single laminated index card reading 'rates go down, checks go out,' taped to the door of a converted supply closet. A second card, taped just beneath it, reads 'do not ask where the checks come from.'
Economists outside the bureau have so far declined to comment, citing the fact that no one has been able to find the bureau's actual office.