December 15, 2010
The interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds plummeted in the summer, falling at one point to under 2.4 percent. It has recently risen back to a still very low rate just under 4.5 percent.
The Washington Post had a front page piece that highlighted this run-up in rates. The piece warned that higher rates will slow the economy and raise the government’s borrowing costs. It suggested that the higher rates could be attributable to the tax deal between President Obama and the Republicans in Congress which will close to $900 billion in debt over the next two years.
It is worth noting that the recent rise in interest rates puts them at almost exactly the level projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last summer. CBO projected that the 10-year Treasury bill rate would average 3.4 percent for 2010 and 3.5 percent for 2011. The CBO projections suggest that the drop in interest rates was the development that needed to be explained, not the recent increase.
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