AS widely expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia has trimmed the official "cash rate" to 0.1 per cent from an already record low 0.25 per cent.
Using the typical language of central bankers the world over since the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2009, reserve bank governor Philip Lowe said the rate cut would "lower financing costs for borrowers".
There was no mention in the formal statement about the impact on savings.
The days when term deposit accounts earned a meaningful amount have long gone.
If the global consensus on monetary policy continues, they will not be back for some time.
Shares and property will always have the potential for higher returns but government guarantees on savings of up to $250,000 have assured account holders that their money is literally "as safe as banks".
But almost unfathomably low interest rates have led everyday savers toward riskier products in a "search for yield".
Add the 9.5 per cent of the national wages bill being poured each year into superannuation, and you have a flood of money pumping up asset classes across the board - from property to blue chips, and the runaway valuations given to tech market darlings worth billions but yet to make a profit.
Despite roaring stock markets, Australia is one of many nations in recession - officially or otherwise - because of the coronavirus shutdowns.
As is the case with every interest rate reduction, the reserve bank is trying to stimulate the economy.
This being the case, how many times does anyone prescribe the same medicine before someone questions how effective it's been?
Interest rates have been cut 18 times since they were last raised, in 2011, to 4.75 per cent.
Lower interest rates may have cushioned the economy from the crisis of the GFC, but it is worth asking whether entrenched cheap money is creating a range of flow-on problems.
An interest rate can be defined as the price someone puts on allowing their money to be used by someone else, and then repaid.
An official cash rate of 0.1 per cent says, effectively, that there is next to no risk in lending that money out - at a time when the low interest rates themselves are an expression of a struggling economy.
Some would say that somewhere, somehow, something doesn't add up.
And that's without considering the impact on savers.
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