Market Interest Rates
There is a market for investments which ultimately includes the money market, bond market, stock market and currency market as well as retail financial institutions like banks.
Exactly how these markets function are sometimes complicated. However, economists generally agree that the interest rates yielded by any investment take into account:
- The risk-free cost of capital
- Inflationary expectations
- The level of risk in the investment
- The costs of the transaction
This rate incorporates the deferred consumption and alternative investments elements of interest.
Read more about this topic: Interest Rate
Famous quotes containing the words market, interest and/or rates:
“It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A government deriving its energy from the will of the society, and operating, by the reason of its measures, on the understanding and interest of the society ... is the government for which philosophy has been searching and humanity been fighting from the most remote ages ... which it is the glory of America to have invented, and her unrivalled happiness to possess.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)