At last month's Austrian Economics Research Conference, we were honored to be joined by Kevin Dowd, an Emeritus Professor of Economics at Nottingham University. Dowd presented a blistering critique of modern central bankers and their mania for monetary stimulus. In this excerpt from his talk, he explains how policies like negative interest rates not only reflect bad economic thinking, but also pose a danger to the civil liberties. What will the Fed and European Central Bank do next, if ersatz economic growth cools in a period of rising interest rates? Don't miss this masterful explanation of how central banks destabilize and distort every aspect of the economy.