What will happen as US interest rates rise?

Interest rates have been so low for so long, asset prices are likely to come under pressure.

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There is one big question on investors' minds at present: what will happen when the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, raises interest rates for the first time in almost a decade? This is a particularly hot topic because interest rates have remained at near-zero levels in the developed world for an unusually long time. They were slashed to help rescue the economy during the financial crisis, and have stayed low as the economy remains unusually weak.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.