Nevertheless, as worries over the economic health of China and the U.S. -- the world’s two main engines of growth -- continue to linger, volatility spreads throughout financial markets and investors question the wisdom of negative rates, government bonds with ultra-low yields remain in demand.

This month, yields on Germany’s two-year notes touched a record-low minus 0.557 percent. The average yield on 1.06 trillion euros of German debt is currently minus 0.05 percent and has been negative every day for two weeks, according to Bank of America. In Japan, yields on about $4.5 trillion of government debt are less than zero, index data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Just last week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its 2016 global growth forecast to 3 percent from 3.3 percent in November, saying that “financial stability risks are substantial.”

A majority of economists in a Bloomberg survey also say negative rates will be in place at the ECB until at least the first quarter of 2018 and at the BOJ until at least the end of that year.

This chart shows the percentage of countries whose two-year generic bond yields fall within certain ranges. The dark gray shows that about 34 percent of the 47 countries included had negative yields as of the end of January.
But that’s not all. The willingness of debt investors to effectively pay governments to borrow also reflects increasing skepticism of central bank policies -- and concern those very measures may ultimately do more harm to the global economy than good. Even after central banks around the world spent trillions since the financial crisis on quantitative easing and dropped policy rates below zero for about two dozen countries, the market’s outlook for inflation globally is closing in on post-crisis lows.