[expat_panama]

current low interest rates in most markets are an economic fiction created by QE.

You may or may not be talking about "Quantiitve Easing", but no matter what "Fed stuff" you mean it all happened after market rates fell.  fwiw, the prime rate's listed here and it shows that interest rates have been falling since the '80's, and they did most of the recent drop from '07 thru '08 and all that e v i l TARP and QE never got on line till later --a reaction to market rates. 

[palmer]

The prime largely follows fed rates, and QE and stupid TARP were to prop up banks destroyed by low rates.