Positive interest rates on Dutch goverment bonds for the first time in 2 years

According to Jacobs, two important factors are at play here: First, people expect the economy to recover after the corona pandemic. Governments have stimulated the economy considerably and are expected to keeping doing so in the coming years. In the United States, you also see that Biden is putting an incredible amount of stimulus into the risers. At the same time, we also see that the pandemic has probably damaged some of the supply in the economy. As a result, soon there will be no supply and there will be some inflation. ‘So, I think that because of the high demand for goods, a damage to supply, and the expected inflation, will now cause interest rates to rise’, Jacobs says.

Since the beginning of the corona crisis, the government has done everything it can to prevent damage to the economy through all kinds of stimulus programs. So how is it possible that we are going to see inflation anyway? According to Jacobs, the situation would have been a lot worse if the government had not stimulated so much. 'I think macroeconomic policy has worked out very well. But we do still see that by 2022 we will be back to the GDP level of 2019. That means that we have missed a number of years of growth.'

A very important effect of rising interest rates is the recovery of the coverage ratio of pension funds. The interest rate has now risen by half a percentage point in just a few months. ‘That is quite substantial,' says Jacobs. It is also possible that we will see the effect of rising interest rates in mortgage rates, but this still remains to be see, given the great competition between mortgage lenders.