The Bank of Canada has been promising lower interest rates for a while, but again it disappoints. There are four reasons that you need to be wary of the current interest rates:

First, the lower interest rates are going to cause investors to not be able to get good returns on their safe investments. If you have investments in them, you cannot expect to get better returns for quite a while thanks to the enormous hesitation to increase interest rates.

Second, you now need to save more money for your retirement, because thanks to having less returns on your investments, you will not have as much money in the future. Even your pension might be affected, as defined-benefit pensions will not be able to meet their obligations thanks to all of the uncertainty out there.

Third, those who are heavily in debt have the risk of losing their jobs due to low interest rates, which are really just signs of global softness.

Finally, the housing market is continually at risk, with fewer people able to afford housing even though interest rates are low.

Interest rates will likely remain low well into 2013, maybe increasing by only one percentage point, so these problems will remain.