Total assets = Total liabilities + Equity. The balance sheet is one of the key elements in the financial statements, of which the other documents are the income statement and the statement of cash flows. A statement of retained earnings may sometimes be attached.
A variable interest rate is just what it sounds like: an interest rate that varies over time. Itâs the opposite of a fixed interest rate, which remains the same over time. Variable interest rates are generally used by financial institutions to move the rates on their products up and down as the market conditions change.
Economics. In economics, the rate of interest is the price of credit, and it plays the role of the cost of capital. In a free market economy, interest rates are subject to the law of supply and demand of the money supply, and one explanation of the tendency of interest rates to be generally greater than zero is the scarcity of loanable funds.