The typical American couple has only $5,000 saved for retirement

[Yupster]

106. The low interest rates are a trap

The government has trapped itself.

It knows it needs to raise interest rates. The original idea of cutting them to nothing was to encourage people to borrow money to buy a car or a house and get the economy going. It was supposed to be a short term stimulus. Now it's eight years later and the rates are still low.

Seniors are hurt the most. Instead of getting $ 700 a month from their CD interest, not they're getting $ 37.24 That missing $ 600 isn't showing up in restaurants and shoe stores. The government is also not getting to tax the $ 700 interest.

So why doesn't the government just raise the rates.

They can't. They've trapped themselves. The government owes $ 19 trillion, mostly in short term loans. It borrows another $ 30 billion or so a month.

If interest rates go up just 3 %, the extra interest cost to the US budget would eventually be $ 570 billion a year. Since we don't have an extra $ 570 billion a year, we are forced to keep interest rates at basically 0 %. No one knows what the government will do when interest rates eventually does go up. How do you come up with an extra $ 570 billion a year?