Economists are herd creatures. Admittedly there may be more than one herd but they like to get with their fellow economists and chew the cud.

Like all social sciences, it has fads, fashions and theories that, like flares, come and go. So, why do I say negative interest rates are the new flares?

Well, for a start, it’s an exciting phrase, one that allows you to visualise some long haired loser from the 70’s nodding along earnestly as some prog rock group embark on a twenty minute keyboard and drum solo on the theme of The Hobbit. But extend that zoom focus; all the kids are wearing flares. Yes, these flappy trousered kids are the economists.

And negative interest rates are Emerson, Lake and Palmer?

Er, no. Yes. Perhaps. I know. I took the analogy too far. It happens.

Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean, yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen. No, what I mean is, economists follow fashions like 70’s kids bopping to progressive rock. And today, the fashion has turned to negative interest rates.

In my Linkedin article I write (though not as I do now, yes I’m versatile) about the growing cult of negative interests rates. How banks, companies and people might be charged for storing balances within the financial system. To be fair, this idea has been around for a while. Following the central bank responses to the last recession - aka The Credit Crunch - interest rates were left on the floor. Real screw the savers territory.

So what to do? The central banks, by bringing rates to zero, had effectively got rid of one of the two arrows they have in their economic quiver (the other being printing money. They like that one too - it’s so virile. Of course, the viagra soon wears off and leaves just a headache. I’m told).

But, some bright spark might have said, what if zero wasn’t the end? What if we, like, took rates to negative? “So we’d charge people for giving us money?” his boss might have asked afraid of not getting down with the kids. “Yeah, exactly! We’ll make money a hot potato. Pass it on on quick!”

And so, the theory of negative interest rates was born.

For me though, big theories of economics - from the General Theory, counter cyclical demand management, The Austrian School, Monetarism, The invisible hand, the incomes augmented Philips curve, return to the Gold Standard, baggism, shaggism, thisism, thatism - they’re all a bit ‘theoretical’. Grand theories are a parlour game played without reference to life outside the cosy prism.

But it reduce it to the micro level. You and me.

Economics is about incentives. If you charge people to store their money you will dis-incentivise them from doing so. Some people will put money under the mattress. Others though will buy holidays and spend their savings and so be vulnerable should they get old, or sick or lose their job.

Money is amoral. It is a means of exchange. No more. No less. However, I'm not sure debt and consumption are wise replacements for prudence and deferred gratification. Negative interest rates seem to tip monetary policy from amorality into immorality. And that can’t be right.

Now. Where’s my flares?