Interest rates have been inching higher for a few years now. The yield on a 10-year US Treasury bond bottomed on 5-July-2016 at a rate of 1.35%. This is a ridiculously low rate that was completely divorced from reality. The occurred as the Fed had finished up it quantitative easing, which entailed buying US Treasury notes and bonds and agency mortgage-backed securities with both hands. While the Fed may have eased the pain of the financial crisis, they may have inflicted additional harm on the patient. In the final analysis, this action was a grand manipulation of bond prices and interest rates that were designed to do a few things. The full effect of those manipulations is yet to be seen.
