Bernanke doing his best to make our seniors the forgotten generation

"Americans who have done everything right,

have worked hard, saved their money

and stayed out of debt are the ones

being punished by low interest rates..."

Richard Fisher-Pres. Federal Reserve

Bank of Dallas

The Wall Street Journal
By Mark Whitehouse
April 4, 2011

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla.—Forrest Yeager, a 91-year-old resident of this seaside community, had been counting on his retirement savings to last until he died. The odds are moving against him.

With short-term bank CDs paying less than 1%, the World War II veteran expects his remaining $45,000 stash to yield just a few hundred dollars this year. So, he's digging deeper into his principal to supplement his $1,500 monthly income from Social Security and a small pension.

"It hurts," says Mr. Yeager, who estimates his bank savings will be depleted in about six years at his current rate of withdrawal. "I don't even want to think about it."

Mr. Yeager is among the legion of retirees who find themselves on the wrong end of the Federal Reserve's epic attempt to rescue the economy with cheap money.

A long spell of low interest rates has created a windfall worth billions to banks, mortgage borrowers and others it was designed to benefit. But for many people who were counting on their nest eggs, those same low rates can spell trouble.

Mr. Yeager's struggle highlights a nagging dilemma facing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. The longer the central bank keeps interest rates low to stimulate the economy, the more money it pulls out of the pockets of millions of savers. Among the most vulnerable are retirees, who have few options to restore lost income on investments built up over entire lifetimes.

In 2009, according to the most recent data available from the Labor Department, average annual investment income for the 24.6 million American households headed by people 65 and older amounted to $2,564. That figure is down 34% from 2007, and is the lowest since 2003.

A recent survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute indicated that one in three retirees had dipped deeper than planned into their savings to pay for basic expenses in 2010.

Most economists agree that the Fed's interest-rate policies, together with other measures, have helped avert a much deeper economic slump. Still, the situation for savers has become progressively worse since the Fed first lowered its interest-rate target close to zero in late 2008.

As of January, the average interest rate paid on relatively safe vehicles such as short-term savings accounts, time deposits and money-market funds stood at only 0.24%. That's one-tenth the level of late 2007 and the lowest on records dating back to 1959. Such depressed rates don't come close to compensating for inflation, which was running at an annualized rate of 5.6% in the three months ended February.

"Americans who have done everything right, have worked hard, saved their money and stayed out of debt are the ones being punished by low interest rates," says Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a voting member of the Fed's policy-making open market committee. "That state of affairs is not sustainable for a long period of time."

The pain inflicted on savers could have political repercussions. Retirees are among the country's most active voters, with the power to influence a wide range of issues, such as who will bear the burden of fixing the federal government's finances and whether politicians should rein in the Fed.

Over the past few years, seniors have taken a conservative turn: In the 2010 elections, Republican congressional candidates attracted 59% of the over-65 vote, compared to 48% in 2008, according to exit polls—a larger shift than that seen among the general populace.

To be sure, many retirees have no savings at all or don't recognize the extent to which interest rates affect them. The subject isn't at the top of their list of concerns, which include health-care costs and Social Security benefits, says David Certner, legislative policy director at the AARP. Still, he says, "we hear a lot of complaints from people who were counting on a certain return from their fixed-income investments."

Low rates don't just hurt retirees. They also penalize people of any age hoping to build up funds for the future, and discourage rainy-day savings that could make U.S. consumers more resilient to job losses and other financial jolts. Americans' net contributions to their financial assets, such as bank and 401(k) accounts, amounted to 4% of disposable income in 2010, according to the Fed. That's the lowest level since it began maintaining records in 1946—except for 2009, when people actually pulled money out. Keep Reading

"It makes you kind of feel like the forgotten generation,"

says Roger Cohen, a 66-year-old who retired to

the Isles from Boston, where he headed a national

coffee-service company. He says he supports the Fed's efforts

to stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates,

but "you have a lot of folks who feel there's a lack of fairness."