[nmhancoc]

> Why is it good for rates to come down: financing mortgages/cars/etc. comes down

Not necessarily, it depends on the principal cost as well. If principal costs increase in tandem with rate declines, the financed cost doesn’t necessarily change.

You’re missing the inputs into rates rather than the outputs from rates.

Rates mathematically represent the value of a dollar available today versus a dollar available in N years.

If we were to find capital intensive, large scale, low assessed risk, economically productive ventures tomorrow, we would expect rates to rise ceteris paribus as the dollars necessary for those ventures would compete with bonds for investment dollars today.

For example wide spread nuclear fusion, or some kind of rail infrastructure, etc.

In that sense secular declines in rates represent a society that has decided it has reached diminishing returns on capital, at least on a risk adjusted basis.

Similarly rates embed a consideration for default risk, or in the case of a bond denominated by the issuer currency risk. In this sense rates going up is bad.

There’s also the sheer debt and deficits governments run. Higher rates imply higher costs for both.

Which situation you want probably starts to encroach on your political leanings, subject to a few parameters.