Since Janet Yellen took over as chairman of the Federal Reserve, conventional wisdom has been that Treasury interest rates would slowly rise as the economy continues to improve, especially as unemployment dips under the six percent benchmark that many analysts placed. Futures markets on the question of “will interest rates remain the same through 2015?” started October with only nine percent of markets responding in the affirmative. And yet, after two weeks of extreme fluctuation in virtually all the American public markets, the futures markets now come in at almost 36 percent agreeing interest rates will not rise next year. Just three short weeks ago, the 10-year treasury rate was at 2.6 percent—last week, that number dipped as low as 1.8, albeit now standing at around 2.2. 

Massive fluctuations like this are not common and certainly are not emblematic of the direction the American economy is supposed to be headed. So what gives? Why are interest rates still so susceptible to fluctuation? And why are they still so low to begin with?

A bit of oversimplified background information: corporations, small business and even places of higher education like Brandeis all have to borrow money if capital is needed. They meet these capital needs through the issuance of debt or bonds. The interest rates that these bonds borrow at is at some level dependent on what rate can be earned by the safer, less risky options. The treasury bonds of the United States are considered the creme de la creme of the investment grade, or ultra-safe bonds; after all, the U.S. treasury can always print more money to meet its financial obligations. Therefore, as federal interest rates stay low, the price to borrow money also remains low. To put the current numbers in perspective, the 10 year treasury was at 6.66 percent at the turn of the 21st century, and 4.76 percent on the first day of January, 2007, the year right before the financial crash of 2008. 

Back to the original question; why are our federal interest rates still so low and oscillating at such an extreme rate? Why does a presidential election in Brazil or Ebola striking New York City cause the massive volatility that it has over the past two weeks? And perhaps most importantly, what can be done by the Fed and federal government as a whole to stop this? 

Neil Irwin, senior economics correspondent for the New York Times, hypothesizes that the issue stems from a complete lack of trust in the Fed by the general public to properly navigate the continued climb out of the great recession: “Investors lack confidence that policy makers have the tools they would need to avert a new slide into recession after years of throwing everything they have at it to try to encourage recovery.” Irwin even goes a step further: “Add it all up, and the markets aren’t betting on catastrophe per se … they are betting that central banks and other policy makers aren’t going to be able to get a handle on global deflationary forces that have been unleashed.” The core issue behind the volatility, states Irwin, is a lack of faith in our government. 

It would appear that Irwin’s argument is heavily supported by the statistics. A Gallop poll updated each year measuring trust in the government, with the two options being either “Just about always/ most of the time” or “Only some of the time/ never” has 81 percent of respondents distrusting the government. 

This statistic represents the highest number of distrust in government since 1994. A CNN poll from late August produced an even more drastic outlook, with only 13 percent of those polled feeling that they can trust the government to do what’s right all or most of the time. 

And surely the skepticism toward our current government is warranted: response over issues ranging from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Ebola claiming the lives of half of its victims and now breeching American soil, Putin in Russia and beheadings in Iran have all been tenuous and have needed reformation. Moreover, domestic issues like gay rights, equal pay for women in the workforce, the immigration crisis on the border and Obamacare all fall under a similar less-than-ideal category. 

And the government that our country does not trust is tasked with dealing with these seemingly uncontainable and ever-growing list of problems. The sky must clearly be falling—or maybe it should be, to save us all from our misery. 

This distrust, therefore, creates an economic cycle of continued volatility. Many economic indicators are, in fact, pointed in the right direction, most notably, unemployment dipping below six percent as mentioned earlier. And yet, despite these positive indicators, the American public still doesn’t trust the government to continue on the road of recovery. So despite economic signs implying higher interest rates, general distrust allows for any macro event to immediately force  those rates back down. By extension, this extreme distrust in government is actually making it more difficult for the government to further the road to economic recovery. 

So to answer the question of what can be done to stop this unhealthy volatility, the answer might just be—despite the apparent failures on a variety of other fronts—to trust that the government has the answer.