According to Citi, approximately 35% of all the world’s debt offers a negative return on investment. The 10-year Japanese and German government bonds yield a negative return, as do the Japanese 20-years.Looking at the diagram below, we see that 100% of all Swiss debt provides a negative return, in addition to 79% of Japanese debt, 77% of German debt, and a notable portion of many other European countries down the table. The exceptions on the list, where no government debt currently trades at negative rate, include the US, UK, Australia, Norway, and Canada.(Click to expand)Cumulatively, $7.4 trillion worth of the world’s debt provides a negative yield. Switzerland recently saw its 50-year bond go negative. (Maybe that’s more deserving of an exclamation point than just a period.) Can anyone else think of a more appetizing investment than wrapping up your life savings in something that, in fifty years’ time (2066), will give you a negative return? These historically low yields are of course partially a consequence of central bank decision-making to cut overnight rates in a response to low economic growth, and part a consequence of investor behavior. With risk appetite so low among many investors, instead of potentially losing money in transactions involving riskier assets, they are piling into low-interest or negative-interest government bonds to at least ensure that some of their money will actually remain safe, even if that means sacrificing some of it in the process.