Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions.
Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers.
Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information.
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey.
Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers.
We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.
Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
Where is the bottom for interest rates? Could it be below zero?
During her recent congressional testimony, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen told lawmakers that she wouldn’t completely rule out the notion of negative interest rates.
Negative rates began in Europe and were recently put into place in Japan, in response to non-existent economic growth. What does this mean exactly? Instead of being paid for parking their excess reserves at the central bank, the banks must pay for the privilege.
The thinking goes that negative interest rates should encourage banks to lend or buy alternative assets that can provide a boost to growth. But the strategy also is seen as raising the risks of financial instability.
Prospects for negative rates here
Don’t bet on negative rates in the U.S. just yet. Not only are they controversial and untested, but the Federal Reserve still has an inclination toward raising — not lowering — interest rates.
Bottom line: Whether rates can, or should, head into a realm below zero has yet to be decided.
Share