Historically, for domestic investors, a high inflation rate has been considered anything over the 3% to 4% annual range with the 3% to 4% figure considered benign. This rate, which would be a godsend for most of the world, is caused by numerous things, some of which have to do with certain monetary and structural advantages in the U.S. economy that may not last indefinitely. That said, for the past decade, the country has experienced a historically low interest rate environment due to unprecedented intervention in the monetary system by the Federal Reserve and lawmakers as part of the efforts to stave off collapse of the global economic system back between 2007 and 2009 when the real estate bubble peaked and imploded, dragging down all sorts of asset classes with it, including the stock market.
