Are central banks alone responsible for decades of falling real interest rates?
Core argument: Real interest rates fell by more than eight percentage points over three decades, a decline the author argues central banks alone could not have delivered, however demented their policies may have been.
Central banks alone, however demented they may have been, could not deliver a decline of more than eight percentage points in real interest rates over three decades. If this huge fall in real interest rates were incompatible with the needs of the economy, one would surely have seen surging inflation. So, what was going on? The big background changes were financial liberalisation, globalisation and the entry of China into the world economy. The latter two not only lowered inflation. They also introduced a country with colossal surplus savings into the world economy. In addition, rising inequality within high-income countries, combined with ageing populations, created huge surplus savings in some of them, too, notably Germany.

