You'd be forgiven for thinking that the times of easily available loans would keep on going but like all things they must eventually come to an end.

We already know that Barclays bank had had to borrow money from the Bank of England at its emergency rate twice and if you are a worried Barclays customer you can look at this questions and answers section to find out more. Now one of the largest mortgage lenders in the UK, Northern Rock is applying to the Bank of England "for emergency financial support".  

There's been a lot of gloomy talk about a recession on the cards and so far we have had it pretty cushy with low interest rates which are steadily increasing to try and beat inflation, hopefully this would bring the price of houses down. Sadly that hasn't been the case and when ever there is talk of house prices coming down people seem to rush out there and try and buy more houses pushing them straight up again. Well that's my theory anyway, because where I am the property prices haven't come down at all and this is probably because loans and mortgages are so easily available with very little security attached to them. Are we heading for a similar scenario of what happened in the US when 22 mortgage lenders went bust over bad loans?