Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
March 01, 2012 at 08:38 AM
Give Federal Reserve Board Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin credit.
At least she had the guts to give a talk on “Accommodative Monetary Policy and Its Effects on Savers.”
Raskin, a former Maryland financial regulation commissioner, discussed concerns about the current ultra-low interest rate environment today during an address in Westport, Conn.
The Federal Reserve Board has, of course, been lowering interest rates or keeping them low most months since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Fed governors say they think the ultra-low rates help the economy by giving consumers access to cheap credit they can use to buy cars and homes and business owners access to cheap credit they can use to start and expand businesses.
The Fed became even more passionate about keeping rates low around 2007, when the financial markets started to freeze over.
The economy is still week, and business owners still need low rates to have an incentive to expand and hire, Raskin said today, according to a written version of her remarks posted on the Fed’s website.
The Fed often raises rates when it thinks prices are rising too quickly.
Inflation jumped to an annualized rate of 3.5% in the first half of 2011, from 1.5% in 2010, but it then fell back to an annualized rate of 1.75% in the second half of 2011, Raskin said.
Raskin said she thinks expectations that prices will remain stable will keep high gas prices from having much effect on the overall inflation rate this year. Stable prices would reduce pressure on the Fed to use higher interest rates to control inflation.
Raskin acknowledged that some critics of low rates believe the low rates create a strain on households that rely on income from interest-bearing assets.
“Indeed, the flow of interest income that households earn on their savings has declined about one-fourth since the recession began,” Raskin said. “However, I would also emphasize that many households are benefiting from the low level of interest rates.”
In addition, Raskin said, interest-bearing assets account for less than 7% of total household assets.
What Raskin doesn’t mention, however, is that one of the most important ways households prepare for the future is by relying on pensions, life insurance policies, disability insurance policies, long-term care insurance (LTCI) policies and other financial instruments backed largely by interest-bearing assets.
