Updated
Sometimes the key to successful communication is not the message but the messenger.
And there's no more high profile messenger in Australia than the Prime Minister.So, even though countless policymakers, economists and commentators have been warning about household debt for years, Thursday's blunt message from the PM may cut through where they have failed.
"Monetary policy remains accommodative and will stay that way for a while yet, but it means that rates are more likely to go up than down," Malcolm Turnbull told an economic conference in Melbourne.
That's not news — certainly not to economists and traders, most of whom have long abandoned thoughts of another interest rate cut and are now generally expecting a move up by the RBA sometime next year.
But they weren't Mr Turnbull's target audience.
Why the RBA can't move
Some economists see the Reserve Bank hiking interest rates before the end of the year. Ian Verrender reckons they're dreaming.
His primary target was revealed by another pointed comment.
"Asset prices can move in two directions — down as well as up," he warned.
At the moment, when an Australian politician or policymaker refers to asset prices there's only one market they're generally thinking of — real estate.
And it was property owners, particularly investors, that Mr Turnbull was clearly addressing on Thursday.
"It is important to be prudent. The banks and the Prudential Regulation Authority are doing their best to make sure of that," he added.
Of course he's referring to the actions that bank regulator APRA has been taking since the end of 2014 to try and limit excessive and risky borrowing, especially for housing investment.
APRA has introduced stricter income-testing benchmarks for banks (arguably ones they should have always been forced to follow), it then moved to place limits on lending to property investors (read speculators) and has now belatedly clamped down on interest-only loans that allow people to borrow more than they can really afford by deferring their principal repayments.
Those moves have sent mortgage rates higher over the past year or so, especially for investors and interest-only borrowers.
So it's a bubble. Now what?
Regulators finally admit Australia has a property bubble, but is it too late to deflate it without popping it? asks Ian Verrender.
They appear to have taken some froth off the peak of the Sydney and Melbourne markets. But both those cities are still recording double-digit property price growth, way above record low wage growth and meagre household income gains.
PM joins jawboning brigade
So regulators have been using their jawbones to supplement their blunt policy tools.It started years ago with former RBA governor Glenn Stevens, not long after the financial crisis — another time rates were at very low levels — who warned that cheap money should result in more homes, not just more expensive ones.
He even took the unusual step — for a central bank official — of appearing on breakfast television in 2010 to warn households about the risks of property investing.
"I think it is a mistake to assume that a risk-less, easy, guaranteed way to prosperity is just to be leveraged up in to property," he told David Koch on Sunrise.
Stevens calmed down as his rate rises in 2009 and 2010 cooled the market, to the point where the RBA reversed course and slashed rates again from late-2011 onwards.
Unsurprisingly, these rate cuts caused their own property boom/bubble, depending on who you ask.
Certainly, current Treasury secretary John Fraser was unequivocal about it two years ago, with an unexpectedly blunt assessment at Senate Estimates.
Two weeks before him, the head of Australia's corporate regulator, Greg Medcraft, went public with warnings about a housing "bubble" in Sydney and to a lesser extent Melbourne.
The Reserve Bank and APRA are naturally more circumspect about discussing bubbles, because it is their job to ensure financial market stability and warnings about a crash from those in charge of the system are likely to spark one.
Murphy's Law forecast
What happens if everything that can go wrong for Australia's economy does so all at once in 2017? asks Michael Janda.
Current RBA governor Philip Lowe has only gone as far as cautioning about risks.
"Ongoing increases in indebtedness and rising housing prices" were a "risk to the future health of the Australian economy", he said earlier this year, echoing his predecessor in saying more housing supply was the key solution.
This week, the Reserve Bank set the cat amongst the pigeons by declaring that official interest rates would probably rise to 3.5 per cent (from 1.5 per cent now) once the economy got back to full health.
There's no surer way to scare the hell out of over-indebted property speculators that to threaten the cheap money that keeps them solvent (just).
Now the jawboning looks like its gone to the very top.
Property investors have scarcely heeded the RBA or succumbed to tighter lending rules, so will the PM have any more luck?
No comments:
Post a Comment