Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble: why ultra-low mortgage rates are dangerous | Jonn Elledge

Older generations complain of interest rates that reached 17%. But today's record lows have contributed to house prices soaring out of reach of the young

If you've ever made the mistake of trying to debate generational inequality with a baby boomer - by pointing out, say, that they benefited from cheap housing, generous welfare and free university places, before voting consistently for governments that have denied those things to their children, all the while calling millennials lazy and entitled in an infuriatingly faux-indulgent way, as if their kids' requests that their salaries bear some sort of relation to their actual living costs makes them the sort of spoiled divas who'd call a gold-plated Uber to take them to the lavatory ...

Anyway. If you've ever had this annoying row with an ageing relative, then you'll know that they have one last trump card, one last line of defence for their privileges. Interest rates, they'll say. None of this 0.25% Bank of England rate in our day. We had proper interest rates. You don't know you're born.

Related: Higher interest rates. Great idea. Here's why it won't happen

Bubbles tend to burst. Prices can't rise forever: one day, interest rates must surely rise