
Lowest Interest Rate in 500 Years: The New Morality of Debt
David Rosenberg, former Chief Economist for Merrill Lynch, recently made the comment that the current global interest rates, at below 2 percent, have only been this low once or twice in the last 500 years. The globalization cycle over the last two decades pushed up total world debt to $223.3 trillion, over three times the world GDP of about $75 trillion. But the current low rates indicate that individuals and corporations no longer have the moral willingness to take on more debt.