lower term premia and bond yields, much of the decline in the trend real rate pre - dates qe, and the crisis more generally, as both real expected policy rates and term premia fell. and it ’ s worth noting that the decline in long rates has also been seen in countries where there hasn ’ t been qe, such as canada and australia, although this in part probably reflects international financial market flows following falls in yields elsewhere. finally, this analysis of the trend real rate does not consider the possibility that trend real rates can be moved around by long financial cycles and the impact of the associated leveraging and deleveraging on interest rates. these effects could well have acted to push up on trend real rates in the long buildup of leverage before the financial crisis and to have pushed down on rates during the protracted deleveraging that followed the bust. some of these effects will be shorter lived and are best thought of as part of the natural rate cycle to which i will return in a moment. but to the extent that these effects are longer lived they may well have pushed down the trend real rate. and of course there is a broader caveat here. long - run structural economic factors are hard to estimate with precision and it can be even harder to forecast their development. for example, demographics are likely to reverse some of the increase in saving as dependency ratios increase and people in retirement spend their savings. when this will occur will depend on many factors, including how long older people are able to stay the analysis by bank staff was not the joint estimation of a single, structural model. instead, it drew on separately estimated impacts of a variety of contributing factors - it ’ s possible that these might overlap. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / publications / pages / speeches / default. aspx in the workforce. what is, i think, safe to say, is that the trend real rate has gone down over the last few decades, driven by structural factors. to put it in historical context, the 10 - year rate of interest in 1976 was 16 %, but that has fallen to around 2½ % today, reflecting very large structural changes since i left this university. part of that fall is associated with much lower inflation rates today than were experienced in the 1970s. but also, since the early 1980s, structural factors have put downward pressure on both the expected real rate and term premia. inflation premia are much lower now

ben broadbent : central banks and digital currencies speech by mr ben broadbent, deputy governor for monetary policy of the bank of england, at the london school of economics, london, 2 march 2016. * * * accompanying charts can be found at the end of the speech. i would like to thank robleh ali, victoria cleland, grellan mcgrath and other colleagues at the bank for helpful comments and suggestions. the views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the bank of england or other members of the monetary policy committee. introduction hello! this morning i ’ m going to talk about money. this should be a routine topic for a central banker, particularly one whose job title includes the word “ monetary ”. it ’ s nonetheless ground on which one treads with a bit of trepidation. that ’ s partly because some of the big questions involved – what money is, why it exists, how and by whom its supply should be governed – seem to evoke very strong opinions. even the great economist john hicks, formerly of the lse, confessed in the 1930s to some nervousness about expressing his views about the matter : “ it is with peculiar diffidence and even apprehension that one ventures to open one ’ s mouth on the subject of money ”. it ’ s also because my particular focus – so - called “ digital ” currencies, including the possibility of a central bank variety – is an area of active interest and research, including at the bank of england. so rather than try and give a lecture on monetary theory, or pre - empt the results of ongoing thinking on this issue, i ’ ll seek to make only a few very broad, conceptual points, touching on the following questions : what is the key innovation in private - sector digital currencies such as bitcoin? what is a “ central bank digital currency ”? and what might be the economic implications of introducing one? i ’ ll be brief about the first, not least because there are good, more detailed descriptions elsewhere – including in two excellent articles by bank economists, published some time ago in the quarterly bulletin. the main point here is that the important innovation in bitcoin isn ’ t the alternative unit of account – it seems very unlikely that, to any significant extent, we ’ ll ever be paying for things in bitcoins, rather than pounds, dollars or euros – but its settlement technology, the so - called “ distributed