Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Nothing Like This Has Ever Happened Before in 323 Years




Here's some great perspective from the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf:
The Bank of England was founded just over 323 years ago, in July 1694, at the instigation of King William III. It is the second oldest continuously-functioning central bank in the world, after Sweden’s Sveriges Riksbank, founded in 1668.

The Bank of England supported the UK’s public finances and stabilised the British financial system through the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, two world wars and the Great Depression. Throughout that period, the Bank has
made secured overnight loans to commercial banks (under different names).

Prior to January 2009, the Bank had never lowered its lending rate below 2 per cent. But it was then lowered to 1.5 per cent, on its way to 0.5 per cent in March 2009 and 0.25 per cent in August 2016. This ultra-easy policy was further buttressed by a huge expansion of the Bank’s balance sheet, which now contains £435bn in UK government “gilt-edged” securities and £10bn in corporate bonds.

Throughout this prolonged recent period of ultra-easy monetary policy, the concern has never been one of runaway inflation, but rather of the opposite. This time really has been different. What does it mean for the future? Nobody knows.
Here's a history of long-term US interest rates  through 2011 (via Bianco Research):


Here is 1955 to the present:




The July 2016 low of 1.50% had never been seen before form long-term rates in the history of the U.S.

But don't for a minute start to think that interest rates will never significantly climb again. The history of interest rates under different central banks interest rate manipulations has been a history of volatile activity.

 -RW

2 comments:

  1. With the obscene national debt why would the Fed let interest rates climb ?

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    Replies
    1. The Fed doesn't set rates, they follow the market.

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