Can real long-term interest rates be kept very low?
It may now seem that keeping real long-term interest rates very low (significantly lower than real growth) is absolutely necessary to : Ensure debt sustainability; Enable low - return investments in the energy transition. But is it possible that real long-term interest rates will remain very low for a very long time? This would require that : Savers accept, for a very long time and without reacti ng, to be taxed by these very low real interest rates; Very low real interest rates do not lead to an unsustainable rise in asset prices (equities, company values, real estate); Central banks manage to keep real interest rates very low even if shocks occur that would normally have driven them up (inflation, normally due to overreaction of nominal interest rates, declining savings, etc.).