From a small northwestern observatory…

Any reasonably good education in finance or economics will include a discussion of the term structure of interest rates.  It’s important to understand — in normal times, short term rates (both borrowing and lending) are lower than long term rates.  However, these rates move all over the map, and at times the relationship can be inverted, as it was back in 2000 (see below).

(By Farcaster – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66130747)

Why do these rates move around so much, and how can they become inverted (yes, that IS illogical)? Ahhh…. that’s important, but still terribly boring. In general, there are three theories — market expectations, market segmentation, and liquidity preference. Today, I’m interested in the third. In short, in times of trouble, investors (that’s you and me, by the way) want to stay liquid. As such, shorter term rates are artificially pushed down and longer term rates pushed up. The 2011 experience is an example.

So why is this of interest (pun intended) on a boring Sunday morning? Because I made the mistake of reading the news this morning, and happened upon a story from Quentin Fottrell of Marketwatch.com, reprinted in Yahoo Finance (yes, THEY’RE still around!) titled “Americans are hoarding money in their checking accounts — and that could be a problem.” In short, yes it could. To quote, “When times are good, Americans feel confident by keeping little in checking, but when times are difficult consumers store money in checking accounts, effectively pulling back on spending on retail and restaurants.” It’s an excellent article, and I highly recommend it.