It might be summer, but the living sure isn’t easy for beleaguered certificate of deposit investors.

That’s the reasonable conclusion after reviewing the BankingMyWay.com weekly CD rate tracker at the beginning of the week.

From top to bottom, CD rates continue to slide, incrementally, but oh-so steadily. At the lower end, three- and six-month CD rates fell from 0.59% to 0.57%, and from 0.90% to 0.87%, respectively. Up the board, one-year CDs fell from 1.22% to 1.18%, while two-year CDs dropped from 1.59% to 1.585. At the top end, four-year CDs slid from 2.05% to 2.04%, and five-year CDs peeled back slightly from 2.22% to 2.21%.

These are some of the lowest rates in years, and in some cases, even decades. Bank analysts are pointing the icy finger of guilt at increasing uncertainty in the financial markets as being the primary culprit for lower rates.

The mindset is this: with layoffs continuing to rise, with the dollar continuing to suffer in a heavily-leveraged U.S. public debt environment and with the still-as-yet-unknown ramifications from cap-and trade and healthcare reform legislation, businesses and investors are essentially standing still. In other words, as one Wall Street wag succinctly put it recently, nobody is investing because there is no reason to invest.

Unfortunately for CD investors, the biggest trigger for change - a recovering economy – is nowhere in sight, despite the slightly rosy predictions coming from the U.S. Treasury Department and from the Federal Reserve. The fact that the Obama administration is even floating a trial balloon over a potential second stimulus doesn’t bode well for the short-term prospects of the U.S. economy.

Until the economy shows signs of stirring, the Fed is sure to keep a lid on rates, thus ensuring a flow of easy, cheap money (the better to keep credit and lending rolling). When the economy starts to recover, the Fed will likely remove that lid and allow interest rates to rise. With it, CD rates should rise, too. That’s a scenario the Fed would love to see, but can’t afford to count on. In fact, signs abound that interest rate policy for the long-term is to keep rates as low as possible. Recently, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco indicated that keeping rates near zero levels is a possibility (she also implied that deflation was a bigger threat than inflation). Neither of those scenarios will bailout CD rates, unfortunately.

Consequently, with no real end in sight for economic growth, what you see for CD rates is what you’ll get – for a while longer, at least.

Looking for at least one positive takeaway? Here it is: you cans still fund good CD deals if you get aggressive and creative. Get the ball rolling with BankingMyWay’s CD rate search tool – it has plenty of CD deals that fare better than the national average.

— For more ways to save, spend, invest and borrow, visit MainStreet.com.