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A chart of interest rates going back to 3000BC would seem like a perfect candidate for an “Axes of Evil” headline.
But of course, we have Homer and Sylla’s “A History of Interest Rates” on our bookshelf too, so this extremely-long-view chart from a recent Bank of America Flow Show note seems OK, mostly?
Though there are only slightly more than 300 years illustrated, versus approximately 4,100 years between the truncation dashes. With such sizeable gaps in the data, it does seem a bit much to say with confidence that interest rates were at “5,000-year lows” after Covid-19.
We are even less sure about the following charts, however. So we figured we would ask you, the readers, to decide which is the biggest crime against dataviz.
A) US government expenditures since 1791
It seems reasonable to point out that, during the American Civil War, the “US government” was not the entity that exists today. That was sort-of the point of it.
Also it isn’t clear what GDP is measured for that part. The Union? Both sides in aggregate? And if both is what’s being measured, did they also include confederate state debt? We’re not so sure about that one.
B) US 10-year government bond annual returns since 1787
The US has been borrowing at the federal level since independence from the UK. But it’s rather tough to compare that borrowing to today, because for a while it lacked much ability to actually tax its residents, or domestic products (at least without causing massive unrest).
C) Global deaths in conflicts since 1400
The source here is Our World In Data, which in turn cites The Conflict Catalogue for death toll estimates before 1800. Its author, Georgia Tech professor Peter Brecke, warns against simplistic readings, since the estimates can only ever be as good as their source.
So were the Spanish keeping accurate records of the number of native peoples killed in the Americas? Should the Aztec and Inca disease victims be included among their war dead? And if so, should Spanish Flu’s toll be added to the World War I total? (Wikipedia says yes and no, respectively, FWIW.) What exactly are the Manchu conquest and the Taiping Civil War telling us about current trends in US defence spending?
Are these questions we need to be considering when reading a report about whether Treasury yields are going up or down?
Other thoughts welcome in the comments, as always.
