In 2020 and 2021 interest rates fell to their lowest in centuries, some historians say in 5,000 years.

Representative long-term interest rate, a UK and US blend, 1700 to 2024, against its long-run average of roughly 5% (dashed). Rates hovered near it for centuries, spiked to almost 16% in 1981, then fell to their lowest ever around 2020.

Why this is happening

After the 2008 crash and again in 2020, central banks cut policy rates to near zero and bought bonds in bulk to hold long-term rates down.
Ageing, high-saving societies generated more capital than the economy could profitably absorb, pushing the price of borrowing, the interest rate, toward the floor.
Weak inflation for a decade gave central banks room to keep rates exceptionally low for far longer than usual.

The take

A rate near zero made borrowing almost free and inflated the price of everything from houses to shares. The sharp climb back since 2022 is the bill arriving, and a lot of cheap-money bets were priced for a world that has gone.

Source: Bank of England Millennium dataset; Homer & Sylla, A History of Interest Rates (2026)