STUMP » Articles » Graph week: 5 Years of Treasury Rates » 23 June 2015, 11:41

Where Stu & MP spout off about everything.

Graph week: 5 Years of Treasury Rates  

by

23 June 2015, 11:41

My brain is fried with writing currently, as my day job involves a lot of writing, and I’m working on multiple things at once.

So I’m going to make some graphs.

The issue I have with many graphs of various economic indicators is the timeframe over which most are shown. I’ve been hearing some chatter about U.S. interest rates fluctuating in response to what is going on in the Eurozone, and that could be, but I take a longer term view of things.

For example, the following is what is a short-term view of interest rates for me:

Some quick remarks on the rates:

  • Ah, I see the 1-year rate is barely edging up.
  • It looks like the 5-year rates underwent a phase shift in mid-2013, and has been bouncing around 1.50% for a while.
  • The interesting movement to me are the longer-term rates, because of their implication for long-term liabilities, such as, oh, pension liabilities
    • The long-term rates (10-year and above) seem to have peaked at the beginning of 2014
    • Long slide through 2014
    • In 2015, we’ve got quite a bit of volatility
    • Recent trend of rising rates started in March
  • But this is still a super-short perspective for really long-term liabilities that last, oh, decades.

But that’s for another time.


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