I would look at this way....they wanted a fund vehicle for safe returns. Safe returns twenty-five years ago meant seven-percent a year on average. Safe returns today mean three-percent a year on average. Folks just don’t grasp that when the fed rate went to almost zero...we really screwed up our traditional safe return market. Bill did his job...but it’s in an environment where people just won’t accept low and safe returns anymore.
My dad would refer to this period in the late 1960s to late 1970s...where a bank CD could get as high as twelve-percent on some rare occasions, and would routinely hit seven percent. Old guys liked that type of risk market and decent return.
Back in 1980, our four year old son earned 20 percent interest on a $100 CD from a savings and loan. Our bank wouldn’t offer a CD for anything less than $500.