Kenneth Rogoff is a highly respected U.S. economist. In 2011, he received the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, and sooner or later he will probably receive the Nobel Memorial Prize. But Mr. Rogoff also belongs to the elite in which voters in the U.S. and elsewhere no longer trust.

I met Mr. Rogoff when he received the Deutsche Bank Prize. At this occasion, he was asked how the huge debt accumulated in the run-up to the financial crisis could be reduced again to a tolerable level. His answer was: through financial repression. With this, he meant a monetary policy aimed at keeping interest rates low while raising inflation, so that government revenues would rise while interest expenses would be depressed. With this method, the U.S. succeeded in reducing the public debt incurred during World War II. When the U.S. entered the war in 1941, federal debt amounted to 49.5 percent of GDP. As a result of the war expenses, the debt ratio rose to 119 percent of GDP in 1946. Thereafter, it fell again to about 57 percent of GDP in 1959. In 1941-1959, the U.S. Federal Reserve kept the interest rate on long-duration government bonds at 2.6% on average. With an average inflation rate of 4.2%, the real interest rate amounted to -1.6%. Thus, negative real interest rates helped cut the government debt ratio by about half between 1946 and 1959. In the early 1970s, the policy-induced depression of real interest rates was labeled “financial repression.”

Economists like Mr. Rogoff cannot imagine that for ordinary people, positive nominal interest rates are related to negative rates like water to ice. The drop below the zero line leads a change in the aggregate condition in both cases. In the “fluid,” positive area, economic agents see interest as a reward for the postponement of consumption. The borrower brings spending forward in time and needs to take care that he uses the borrowed money such that he can repay the lender the principal with interest. In the “frozen,” negative area, economic agents see interest as an illegitimate tax imposed upon them by unelected technocrats. They may just tolerate the tax levied through negative real interest rates when it is the result of unexpected inflation. But they resist taxation through negative nominal rates even more than normal taxation, because it lacks democratic legitimacy.

The politics of negative interest rates has backfired. Banks are bleeding, and people rebel against them. Like Mr. Rogoff, central bankers belong to the elite. But they cannot be voted out of office.

However, people can withdraw their trust in the money they create.

Thomas Mayer is the founding director of the Flossbach von Storch Research Institute in Cologne, Germany.