Between a rock and a hard place

When the long-expected credit crunch seemingly began to bite in September, and a subsequent series of events led to customers queuing outside branches of Northern Rock to withdraw their savings, financial analysts were able to trace both events back to the collapse of the US sub-prime lending market earlier in the year. Sub-prime lending seemed like a good concept as the US experienced a housing bubble between 2001 and 2005. As the value of homes increased steadily and interest rates remained low, lenders gave loans to borrowers who would normally be deemed too much of a risk to provide cr...