A long trend towards lower interest rates  The start of the long-term downtrend in global interest rates can be traced back to the early 1980s, in the wake of the United States (US) Federal Reserve’s (Fed) decision to tighten policy sufficiently to uproot what was, at the time, seen as structurally high inflation.
As US inflation started its long decline, so did interest rates: from averaging 10.0% in the 1980s, the federal funds rate declined to 1  averages of 5.1% in the 1990s and 2.9% in the 2000s.