However, after hitting record highs, interest rates have eased back to 10%.
In the latest sign of turmoil, Italy — the euro region's most indebted member, after Greece — was forced to pay record-high interest rates in order to complete an auction of its five-year bonds on Tuesday, despite continuing purchases by the European Central Bank.
Instead, unhinging the dollar from gold gave us more than a decade of debilitating inflation, catastrophic increases in the price of oil and record-high interest rates.
And now they all know why, with the deficit at record high levels, interest rates remain at record low levels.
The Fed's $2.8 trillion "quantitative easing" program has, among other things, lifted stock prices to record highs, driven interest rates to record lows and put a floor under what had been a reeling housing market.
Borrowing costs for Italy and Spain recently hit record highs and interest rates on 10-year bonds of countries such as France and Belgium, which are considered more financially sound, spiked last month.
The cost of insuring Italy's sovereign debt against default surged to a record high, and the interest on its 10-year bond leaped to a record 5.67 percent.
Both were beset by record inflation, unsustainably high interest rates and debt defaults that were almost every bit as scary as today.
Tombs said: "With the average mortgage loan-to-income ratio now at a record high, the case for raising interest rates to discourage households from accumulating debts they will struggle to repay continues to strengthen".
Spreads between commercial banks' borrowing and lending rates were at record highs, even though interest rates in general were at record lows.
