High-Yield Savings Accounts?

Two top Federal Reserve officials, San Francisco Fed President John Williams and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, both said yesterday that they see no need for the Federal Reserve to ease monetary policy any further. Well that's good, given that the Fed has already increased the monetary base $1.8 trillion since September of 2009. That is a 207% in less than four years.

You know Fed has done what it could to punish savers when the Bank of America is advertising its "High-Yield Savings Account" that sports an interest rate of 0.75%. In these cash gorged days, an interest rate of less than 1% is considered high-yield. To put this in perspective, a normal passbook savings account paid over 5% in 1987 while the rate for one year CDs was over 9%.

Historic Savings Rates: 1987-2005