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Japan is a good example of long term low interest rates.
With inflation going up rate rises in the near future as the economy normalises wouldn't surprise me.
wildwest-
In Japan?
Inflation still negative there, no?
https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/inflation-cpiInflation is going up here, but it's cost push, mainly due to brexit. Demand isn't driving it so increasing rates doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
But you are right that some people are still saying we need interest rate rises so it might still happen. But a % or two, nothing like the 70s and 80s. And I would expect it to be quickly reversed if it did happen as it would trash growth.
I have to watch this for work and our assumption is no significant movement in the next couple of years.
frank9755
It might.
Here's the long term history. The high interest rates that we experienced in period between the oil crisis / end of Bretton Woods and joining the European Monetary System - when the £ was really free-floating and there was a belief that supporting it was a matter of national prestige - were the abberation.
Rampant asset price inflation since 1979 has reduced returns on everything. High interest rates would imply the stock market, the property market and other asset markets crash and stay crashed. I don't see it happening this side of a major reset of the global economy.
Of course those major resets do happen and they are not predictable, so you could still be right, just it would be a very big deal, not just a pendulum swinging gently back the other way.
I don't expect to ever buy an annuity, and I think that when Osborne stopped them being compulsory, he thought they had had their day.