French 10-year Bond Yield History

This graph from Bank of America shows the history of the interest rate of the French government. Besides the spike in borrowing costs during the French Revolution, what is also interesting is the continuous decline in interest rate since the 1970s.

Business Insider

Short Term Interest Rate In the United States (1831-2011)

Here I show the short term interest rate for the United States from 1831-2011. The short time interest rate was determined by supply and demand before 1913 and set by the Federal Reserve since 1913. Especially notice the almost continue decline in the interest rate from 1980 in which the financial markets exploded and housing bubbles were created - (lending) money became more and more cheap for consumers, businesses, governments and banks.

Ritholtz

Euro Zone Bond Spreads Above Historical Levels Part 2 (Since 1970)

Three weeks ago I posted this overview of government bond spreads for the PIIGS compared to Germany:

http://www.economicsinpictures.com/2011/11/house-prices-around-world-us-house.html

That chart went back to 1990. This one goes back to 1970 and has much more data for Greece. You can see that in the 80s bond spreads were particularly high as well.

Interest Rates (global), Inflation (global) and Credit Growth (EuroZone)

World short term interest rates have been lowered drastically by the central banks.



This couldn't stop a dramatic fall in global inflation rates in 2008 and 2009. In 2010 and 2011 inflation rates started growing again, until recently.



Euro Zone Credit Growth. With the financial crisis, followed by the economic crisis (recession) and the sovereign debt crisis resulted in an almost stagnant credit growth in the Euro Zone.

Euro Zone Bond Spreads Above Historical Levels

This chart shows the Government Bond Spreads (difference between interest rates of 10 year government bodns of the selected countries verser the interest rate of german bonds). You can see that for some of the countries these spreads are higher than they were in the years before. So you may ask as the FT did: Why did we bother?

FT

World: Safest Versus Riskiest Government Debt

This graph from The Economist compares two-year government debt bond yields in the world. On the left side the riskiest bonds are listed (with the highest interest rate) and on the rate sate the safest bonds. Notable is that two out of three of the three countries that have riskiest government bonds are in Europe. The three safest countries are in Europe as well.

Due to a request by the Economist this graph has been removed. 

View the graph here

Bond Yields PIIGS compared to Germany and France since 1995

This graph from Der Spiegel shows the 10-year Government Bond Yields from the PIIGS-countries (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy) compared to the economically strong(er) countries Germany and France.

Der Spiegel

Leading Indicators United States Up in May

This chart shows that all of the ten selected leading economic indicators for the United States except for Supplies Deliveries have increased in May compared to April. Let's see if the growth continues in June.

Econompic Data

Brazil's Central Bank Keeps Raising The Interest Rate

The interest rate in brazil already reached 12,25% this month