Mortgage Crisis Spreads Across the Atlantic

UK home prices tumbled 2.5% in February—the largest fall since the 1990s—as the International Monetary Fund warned that Britain could face a housing crisis similar to the US. British PM Gordon Brown insisted yesterday the decline was containable, but the Bank of England is now under serious pressure to cut interest rates at its meeting tomorrow, the Times of London reports.

The fall in property value is not universal: while less prosperous parts of the country saw major drops, prices in London and other wealthy areas continued to rise, albeit more slowly. The Brown government is set to meet with mortgage lenders this week, and today Chancellor Alistair Darling appointed a top banker to help "reopen the mortgage market." (More housing crisis stories.)