Low Bank Interest Rates Demand Action

By Raanan Geberer

Published in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 13, 2010


BROOKLYN – I’m the type of person who rarely looks at interest rates. I figure it doesn’t make any difference whether something is a point up or down from what it was before. I know that when I opened a new short-term CD account about two ago it was around 3 percent, down from 4 percent just beforehand. I was a tiny bit unhappy about this, but not that much.

Therefore, it was a shock to me when my wife called it to my attention that the current rate interest on this CD account was only about 0.35 percent or so.

Now, the only reason someone opens a CD account is to get a higher interest rate than a regular savings account. So a 0.35 percent interest rate on a CD, even a seven-month CD, is rather disconcerting. Thinking it might be just a peculiarity of this particular bank, I went to another bank where I have an account and asked for a copy of their rates. They were very similar.

I know that interest rates are more or less set by the Federal Reserve Bank, and that interest rates are lowered for some reason having to do with the economy. However, I don’t really care – I can understand lower rates, but this is a little too much. And I’m really shocked that there isn’t more of an outcry about this.

I would encourage anyone who’s upset about these low bank interest rates to deluge the state Banking Superintendent, the Federal Reserve Bank, their elected representatives and anyone else with phone calls and e-mails. Maybe then, someone will re-think these abysmally low rates.