The commonwealth countries are all facing a property bubble (Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc). The household debt levels and property prices didn't taper off nearly as much following the 2008 US housing crisis and has pretty much continued unabated: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-punwasi/real-estate-bub...
Which is fascinating to consider that the Bank of Canada, et al, have let this happen for so long and are only reacting now...
By artificially keeping rates near 0% the idea was to 'stimulate' the economy by making capital freely available, so for example, banks can more easily loan money to businesses generating long term economic growth and add new jobs. But the side effect has been that retail banks were incentivized to hand out cheap mortgages and the public was incentivized to speculate on the 'hot' property market.
If this bubble doesn't deflate smoothly this will be yet another very expensive side effect of mainstream monetarist policy.
Which is fascinating to consider that the Bank of Canada, et al, have let this happen for so long and are only reacting now...
By artificially keeping rates near 0% the idea was to 'stimulate' the economy by making capital freely available, so for example, banks can more easily loan money to businesses generating long term economic growth and add new jobs. But the side effect has been that retail banks were incentivized to hand out cheap mortgages and the public was incentivized to speculate on the 'hot' property market.
If this bubble doesn't deflate smoothly this will be yet another very expensive side effect of mainstream monetarist policy.