The interest rate on long-term bonds has been kept abnormally low in the past few years by the Federal Reserve’s “unconventional monetary policy” of buying massive amounts of Treasury bonds and other long-term assets – so-called quantitative easing (QE) – and promising to keep short-term rates low for a considerable period. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s announcement in May that the Fed would soon start reducing its asset purchases and end QE in 2014 caused long-term interest rates to jump immediately.