All About the Bank Bail Out - Part 4

This is exactly the opposite situation to that which is required in a macro economic situation such as a recession. During tough economic times people need to be mobile. As redundancies and layoffs increase it is beneficial for people to be willing to relocate geographically in order to find work. If the property market crashes to a point at which people will lose too much money if they sell up, they will be unwilling to do so and therefore cannot relocate to find more work.

Further to this it should be noted that home owners who do find a buyer for their homes may have their deal thwarted by the fact that the buyer may be unable to find a suitable mortgage product. So it appears that the sub-prime mortgage crisis can affect the property market from several different angles, and this seems to be exactly the situation that has occurred in the modern property market. The imprudent lending practice of mortgage lenders seems to have turned the screws on the general public in more ways than one.

So it appears that the act of lending copious numbers of sub-prime mortgages to people who could not afford to repay them has ruined the economy and many industries within it. With the problem identified and the economy already in decline, what measures are being taken to fix the problem?

Governments the world over have had to intervene like never before to fix the mortgage market. Interest rates have dropped considerably in several countries to help people cope with repayments on their existing mortgages. In the UK the Bank of England Base Rate dropped to half a percent. Borrowers with variable mortgages have benefited considerably as their monthly repayments have dropped by up to ninety percent. Unfortunately many home owners have fixed interest rates and therefore did not benefit from the base rates change.

Various governments have also either considered or implemented creating toxic banks. These banks buy up bad debt held by lenders in order to strengthen the lenders' balance sheets. This should encourage them to lend more money to their customers as they will no longer be constrained by thousands of mortgages and loans that have become impaired. While this strategy has not yielded an immediate positive result it is hoped that it will become an important part of an overall strategy for rescuing the mortgage market.

The UK government has also begun quantitative easing. This process involves the buying up of government bonds with the intention of growing the overall supply of money in the economy. Once again the intention of this strategy is to encourage lenders' to lend more money to home owners and businesses. The fewer businesses that go to the wall, the lower the unemployment rate will be and the faster the economy can recover.

There is no quick solution to solving the mess sub-prime mortgages have created in the wider economy. Bailing out the banks is the first step, and an important one, but it will take several years for the full effect to be felt.