The Rates Blog has reported that John Key has stated that he believes the RBNZ will leave the official cash rate unchanged until at least mid-2010, because of the high dollar.
Now, I prefer it when politicians completely stay away from monetary policy. However, instead of banging on about that again lets look at why he made this statement.
- He realises that a higher exchange rate implies that monetary policy is tightening and as a result makes the likelihood of a lift in the OCR lower (all other things equal of course),
- He heard the RBNZ say that it won’t until late-2010 and has heard them mention the dollar,
- Bill English has been saying that the high exchange rate is an issue, and given that a higher OCR often leads to a higher dollar this could be problematic.
However, if these are the reasons for making the claim I still have one underlying concern – the high exchange rate isn’t the problem, the factors that lead the exchange rate to be too high are at fault. The high dollar is a symptom not a cause.
Truly, I think the discussion of the dollar is simply smoke and mirrors. If we have an issue it is because of some underlying structural issue in the economy. As a result, we should be asking what the structural issue(s) is instead of bemoaning the dollar and asking the RBNZ to ignore its inflation mandate.
1 comment
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Bernard Hickey says:
October 27, 2009 at 11:31 am (UTC 12 )
Excellent points Matt.
Key needs to address the underlying imbalances, not question the Reserve Bank’s independence.
cheers
Bernard
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October 27, 2009 at 11:33 am (UTC 12 )
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