Americans’ fascination with ‘mortgage rates:’ a tour through financial market history
When President Donald Trump lashed out at Google, calling it “rigged” to show negative stories about him when users searched on the term “Trump news,” it was a reminder of the power of the technology that shapes our lives.
Google had managed to avoid the kind of scrutiny that’s swamped Facebook and Twitter over the content that’s posted to their sites – even though its own model conveys a double dose of power. Anyone trying to reach lots of eyeballs – politicians, businesses, journalists – is concerned, like the president, about what web sites Google will suggest when certain terms are searched.
But another reason Google is dominant is that it knows what we are all looking for on the internet. It’s like our communal therapist: a mass repository for questions about medical fears, our best-laid plans for working out, dieting and being organized, and our naughtiest fantasies.
Google searches are often a bit more benign – but still reveal a lot. MarketWatch took a look at the history of Americans’ searches for the term “mortgage rates” over the past 14 years, which was the longest back in time we could take that search. The pattern that emerges, plotted on the chart above, reads like a consumer history of the American economy and financial markets in a particularly edgy moment in time.