(Bloomberg) March 13, 2024 — US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said it’s “unlikely” that market interest rates will return to levels that prevailed before the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a wave of inflation and higher yields.
“I think it reflects current market realities and the forecasts that we’re seeing in the private sector — that it seems unlikely that yields are going to go back to being as low as they were before the pandemic,”
The yield on 10-year US Treasury notes averaged 2.39% in the decade through 2019 — low by historical standards. It spiked above 5% last October after the Federal Reserve raised rates aggressively to combat inflation, and now sits just below 4.2%