A preliminary glance at long-term real and nominal interest rates

In the early days the U.S. Government Bonds traded like many new issuers lacking a history of repayment: high and volatile.

Bond yields reflected only loosely the longer-term trends in commodity prices (however, a longer commodity series might tell a different story)

U.K. and U.S. real bond yields have shared quite a bit of co-movement over the years

Commodity prices tend to link U.S. and U.K. real bond yields, and probably explain the a good fraction of the common variation in international bond yields

The Real Interest Rate Spread has roughly co-moved with the real us/uk exchange rate (right axis)

Download this dataset from the Download Data page.

 Sources: Bank of England Macrohistory Database, FRED, and my calculations.