Will United States inflation expectations rise? With the large and persistent underperformance of the economy, inflation expectations won’t go too high, though they may edge up from current low levels. Certainly they won’t fall.
Finally, as the economy improves investors will start to wonder if a Fed tightening isn’t around the corner. Right now that corner is very far away, so far away that nobody can see it through the fog of statistics. However, in a year or two, we might reasonably make out the dim outlines of the corner around which the tightening lies.
The result is that I expect gradual increases in long-term interest rates through this year and 2014. As I write (May 29, 2013), the 10-year Treasury Bond yields 2.12 percent. I could see that interest rate rising above three percent by the end of 2014, maybe up as high as 3.5 percent. (For those of us who lived through the era of double-digit rates, roughly from 1979 through 1985, it’s a joke to say “maybe as high as 3.5 percent.”)
This gain in long-term rates will push the 30-year mortgage rate up around 5.5 percent, which is still a low interest rate. However, the move from the threes to the fives will discourage people with cheap mortgages from moving. (See my article the The Coming Mortgage Lock-in: Future Effects of Today’s Low Rates.)
Risks to the forecast are fairly simple. I think the chance of short-term rates rising over the forecast time horizon are very, very low. Long-term rates could remain at today’s low levels if the economy re-slumps. However, a surprise rebound in economic growth worldwide could add another percentage point to my forecast. But the high interest rates of 30 years ago will remain but a distant memory no matter how surprising next year’s economy turns out to be.