We often think of today's monetary policy backdrop of 0% interest rates as being unprecedented. Here in the UK, for example, short-term rates the Bank of England rate basically haven't been this low since at least 1694, and perhaps even further back than that. However, while there are no precise parallels for what we're living through, a dig around shows it's not quite as unique as we might think.
The other day, I pulled out an old Federal Reserve research paper from November 2000: Monetary policy when the nominal short-term interest rate is zero. One of the many charts in this rather dry read notes that US short-term rates fell to near-0% after the Great Depression, and occasionally even dipped into negative territory between 1938 and 1941.
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