Will the federal reserve go to negative interest rates?

I don't think that will happen. It's almost a conspiracy theory: "The Gubbamint Will Steal Your Moolah!" People are hoarding dollars the way they do toilet paper right now because they don't know what the uncertain future will hold. (There's less hoarding going on as the situation gradually improves.) If worst comes to worst, expect to see more panic-buying of N97 masks.

We have ultra-low interest rates right now. You still have to pay interest on credit cards, mortgages, and other kinds of loans, just less. Right now online banks are offering far in excess of 0.25% interest as well. The nightmare scenario that your savings accounts will start shrinking simply isn't going to happen.

At least the current ultra-low interest rates are helping struggling businesses (a little). We want as many as possible to survive and continuing employing people once things return to normal.

Who knows, no one a month ago would've thought people would pay you to take delivery of their oil either.

their spending are never 100% transparent...

Shadow Rider wrote: ↑Who knows, no one a month ago would've thought people would pay you to take delivery of their oil either.

Oil was never in the negative. Oil futures were in the negative. This isn't something that affects the vast majority of the population, but of course it sucks for the oil & gas industry.

The U.S. has been in a 'negative real interest rate' era several times since the 1940's making it unnecessary for the funds rate to actually be negative 'ie. negative interest rate' and is part of Economic Theory and paying down debt:

Negative real interest rates

"The real interest rate solved from the Fisher equation is

1 + i 1 + π − 1 = r {\displaystyle {\frac {1+i}{1+\pi }}-1=r} {\frac {1+i}{1+\pi }}-1=r

If there is a negative real interest rate, it means that the inflation rate is greater than the nominal interest rate. If the Federal funds rate is 2% and the inflation rate is 10%, then the borrower would gain 7.27% of every dollar borrowed per year.

1 + 0.02 1 + 0.1 − 1 = − 0.0727 {\displaystyle {\frac {1+0.02}{1+0.1}}-1=-0.0727} {\frac {1+0.02}{1+0.1}}-1=-0.0727

Negative real interest rates are an important factor in government fiscal policy.

Since 2010, the U.S. Treasury has been obtaining negative real interest rates on government debt, meaning the inflation rate is greater than the interest rate paid on the debt. Such low rates, outpaced by the inflation rate, occur when the market believes that there are no alternatives with sufficiently low risk, or when popular institutional investments such as insurance companies, pensions, or bond, money market, and balanced mutual funds are required or choose to invest sufficiently large sums in Treasury securities to hedge against risk.

Lawrence Summers stated that at such low rates, government debt borrowing saves taxpayer money, and improves creditworthiness.

In the late 1940s through the early 1970s, the US and UK both reduced their debt burden by about 30% to 40% of GDP per decade by taking advantage of negative real interest rates, but there is no guarantee that government debt rates will continue to stay so low.

Between 1946 and 1974, the US debt-to-GDP ratio fell from 121% to 32% even though there were surpluses in only eight of those years which were much smaller than the deficits."

Yes