Nine and a half years ago, in the heady house price boom of 2003, the Bank of England lowered interest rates to a (then) paltry 3.5%. We all know what happened next. Mortgage lending went beserk, house prices went manic and in 2007 the banks' balance sheets started to burst under the strain. We're still nowhere near out of the woods five years on.
Have look back at the BBC archives. Have a look at how the experts, or the so called 'great and the good' all hailed it as an unquestionable good. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and look at the comments from the man on the street. This part is my personal favourite:
House prices last month were 24.9% higher than in January 2002, Halifax, the UK's biggest mortgage lender, said on Wednesday. But the Bank warned of a gloomier economic outlook. "Over the next two years, the prospects for demand, both globally and domestically, are somewhat weaker than previously anticipated," a Bank statement said. While inflation was, at 2.7%, a "little above target", the Bank attributed the rise to temporary factors. The cut would help keep inflation "on track", Thursday's statement added.
Isn't it just a shame that the five readers quoted at the bottom of the article weren't running the Bank of England instead? The bad news is that 'great and the good' are still there, pushing out the same old politically correct claptrap and wrecking young people's futures in the process of being paid to be wrong about pretty much everything. I wonder how many of them own buy-to-lets?
Isn't it time to have a clearout?
Yea.
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