The 5,000-year history of interest rates shows just how historically low US rates still are right now

pulse

September 20, 2017 8:02 PM

Interest rates were around 15% in Rome under Diocletian.

The Federal Reserve left its benchmark interest rate unchanged between 1.00% and 1.25% at the conclusion of its two-day meeting in September.

It also confirmed, as expected, that it will begin shrinking its $4.5 trillion balance sheet in October.

The central bank has raised rates four times since December 2015, when it hiked for the first time since before the financial crisis.

But, rates remain at the lowest levels in the last 5,000 years of civilization.

Citing a speech by Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, Bank of American Merrill Lynch's Michael Harnett and his team previously shared the chart below showing just how low today's rates are relative to those in the past.

Haldane's list of sources for this is pretty staggering. (You can look through them all here

To make it a bit clearer, we put together an annotated list of key historical episodes and the corresponding interest rate at the time, using data first put together by @Macro_Tourist back in 2014: