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John,

Read the article carefully - for you and I the option to withdraw our cash and stuff it in mattresses prevents banks from breaking zero. But for large institutions and banks lending among themselves, this is where there seems to be the outbreak of negative rates.  From the article, "The European Central Bank, struggling to ignite growth, has a deposit rate of –0.2 percent. The Swiss National Bank, which worries that a rise of the Swiss franc will hurt trade, has a deposit rate of –0.75 percent. On April 21 the cost for banks to borrow from each other in euros (the euro interbank offered rate, or Euribor) tipped negative for the first time."  The debate on this site has been when will cash die for a long time.  It seems to me that the governments pushing cash to be eliminated is the first real threat that it may come true.  Then will we have the power to avoid negative rates???

There is a regulatory push to actually eliminate cash - governments appear to have an incentive to go cashless.  See this article from Bloomberg Businessweek: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/negative-interest-rates-may-spark-existential-crisis-for-cash

James - Science Fiction writers make even better futurists.  See 1982's White Plague by Frank Herbert.  Brett's story above is torn from the pages of science fiction as distracting as that may be to the core issue.  We can debate the demise of cash, but the behavioral shift required to quote Brett  "For every Jim Wells there are 20-30 Millennials who never use cash.", will take a generation at least and I am sure additional technological innovations to assist.