I am amazed that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has emphasized the beneficiaries of low interest rates and has never bothered to mention the losers. Nor, to my knowledge, have key administration officials or members of Congress. Yet interest rates close to zero are causing considerable distortions and, for many, outright harm. About Gary Shilling A. Gary Shilling, a Bloomberg View columnist, is president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., a consultancy in Springfield, New Jersey. He is the author of “The Age of Deleveraging: Investment Strategies for a Decade of Slow Growth and Deflation.” More about Gary Shilling Think about savers who are receiving trivial returns on their bank and money-market accounts. Those returns would be negative if fund managers weren’t waiving fees. Furthermore, free checking accounts are disappearing. Banks and thrifts, facing low interest earnings, have increased the size of the required balance on checking accounts that pay no interest to $723, on average, up 23 percent in the last year. The average fee on non-interest checking accounts jumped 25 percent to $5.48 per month, also a record. The percentage of non-interest checking accounts that are free of charges dropped to 39 percent from 76 percent in 2009.