"Zero interest rates are not normal": WSJ's Take On the Week on idle cash
Telis Demos and Miriam Gottfried bring in MaxMyInterest founder Gary Zimmerman to ask why so much money still sits in accounts paying next to nothing.
WSJ Podcasts
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 47,014 views a day, 59 times a normal first day on this channel (792).
Why Cash Is King in the Era of Higher Interest Rates | WSJ’s Take On the Week
WSJ Podcasts usually opens a new episode to fewer than a thousand views on its first day. Its latest conversation about savings had passed 40,000 within 18 hours.
The episode, "Why Cash Is King in the Era of Higher Interest Rates | WSJ's Take On the Week," starts close to home. Miriam Gottfried recalls watching the rate on her own high-yield savings account begin to climb in 2022. Then she puts a question from Telis Demos's Heard on the Street column to the listener: "Are you a yield farmer or a bond trader?"
The hosts widen the lens before narrowing it again. They look at what higher rates have done to commercial real estate, mortgages, private credit and private equity. With bank earnings season starting, Demos revisits the 2023 regional banking crisis.
The second half belongs to Gary Zimmerman, who started MaxMyInterest after the 2008 financial crisis and joins them in the studio. His argument is that cash deserves the attention people give their stocks. "An entire generation has grown up thinking that zero interest rates are normal. They are not normal," he says. He puts the scale of the problem at "$20 trillion of cash sitting in US commercial banks," most of it, in his view, under-earning, under-insured or both.
He is candid about the limits of his own subject ("Cash is not a good asset class," he says, since at best it keeps pace with inflation) and spends time on the fine print of deposit insurance: the $250,000 limit applies per depositor, per account type and per bank charter. The episode closes on a newer worry, whether AI agents that move deposits quickly could someday speed up a bank run.
The comments read like a savings support group. One viewer remembers a grandmother who kept a six-figure sum in checking for fear of a single overdraft fee. Another found out that years of savings had been earning a hundredth of a percent. Several swap notes on Treasury bills, and one reminds everyone that inflation eats into stock returns too.
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What viewers say
My grandmother always kept $100K in her checking account. She lived in fear of getting an overdraft charge. This was a woman that I doubt spent $1K a month, including apartment rent (yes, this was many years ago). But you couldn't convince her otherwise. All she could see was that $30 or whatever overdraft fee, not all the money she was losing on keeping that money in cash, in an account that at that time paid zero interest. Now I'm in a similar situation. I'm retired and when I take a disbursement that money sits in cash as it's slowly used up for the monthly expenses. It's not a huge…
@xlerb2286Read it all on YouTubeI had a lot of cash in my Chase account for years until i finally figured out they were only paying me .01% interest! I moved the cash to a few banks that pay almost 4%. I think the Fed injected so much liquidity into the system the major banks don;t even need your money anymore.
@JohnDanielsSee it on YouTubeAlso keep in mind that the the _"inflation loss" also applies to stock investments meaning: If your stock investment goes up 8% in a year, you still need to deduct the rate of inflation, say 3%, from that for the net gain, which lowers it to 5% on your investment._
And if your stock loses 30%, inflation is added to that, so net loss for the year would be 33%. _Inflation loss applies to everything, not just cash._@D-Rex-See it on YouTube
5 more comments
since I discover treasury bills I stoped putting money on a saving account. Treasury bills has higher yield and no state taxes.
@fabiog627See it on YouTubeBe careful also some high yield savings accounts are easy to put your money in but some have limits on getting the money out.
@JohnDanielsSee it on YouTubeCash is a MUST when you have a mortgage. You can lose your job any day!
How do you make your mortgage payment if you don't have any cash in your savings accounts or some rolling CDs?
I could use the cash to reduce the mortgage balance, but that would be REALLY dumb!
As long as you keep your job and keep paying your mortgage, you can use the "released" cash to invest.@vzeq24See it on YouTubeanything over $250,000 which is the insured FDIC amount should be in too big to fail banks OR preferably in 30 day treasuries or in US treasury only money market funds - this should be normal risk management for HNW individuals and companies
@PChris-k3p6zSee it on YouTubeDo as Buffett does. Buy very short term Treasuries that cover inflation. Then after the AI bubble implodes - scoop up all the bargains.
@michaelwilson9921See it on YouTube
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- Channel
- WSJ Podcasts
- Subscribers
- 165,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 31,513
- Channel views, pace per day
- 3,656 (on a normal day: 10,016)
- Video published
- October 11, 2026
- Video views so far
- 41,642 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 47,014
The numbers
For a channel whose episodes usually build slowly, this one reached far beyond its normal first-day audience within hours.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which bank's collapse in March 2023 set off the regional banking crisis Telis Demos revisits?
Silicon Valley Bank failed in March 2023 after a rapid run on its deposits, and Signature Bank and First Republic followed.