In October 2008 and the months that followed, the central bank of the US, the Federal Reserve, together with the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, cut the interest rate and took other measures to ease credit and encourage banks and other financial institutions to increase their lending. The US interest rate was the lowest with Ben Bernanke lowering the interest rate to 0.02%. Mark Carney of the Bank of Canada reduced the Canadian interest rate to 0.25% while Mervin King of the Bank of England cut interest rates in Great Britain to 0.50%. In Europe, Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank lowered interest rates to 1.75%. Tito Mboweni and the South African Reserve Bank followed a similar strategy and interest rates declined from 12% to 7%. The idea of these interest rate cuts and easier credit was to stimulate business investment and consumption expenditure and increase aggregate demand. Source: Parkin et al., 2012, Economics: Global and Southern African Perspectives. 2nd edition. Pearson