Why Very Low Interest Rates May Stick Around
The interest rate on a 10-year Treasury note was below 4 percent every year from 1876 to 1919, then again from 1924 to 1958. The record is even clearer in Britain, where long-term rates were under 4 percent for nearly a century straight, from 1820 until the onset of World War I.
The real aberration looks like the 7.3 percent average experienced in the United States from 1970 to 2007.