Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler, issuing his first
quarterly Monetary Policy Statement this morning, has left
the Official Cash Rate unchanged.
He was widely expected to hold the rate at its current record
low of 2.5 percent, so the focus today will be firmly on the
accompanying statement and how the bank's view of the
economic outlook has changed.
In particular, economists are looking for evidence of a
higher level of anxiety at the central bank about the housing
market.
Westpac chief economist Dominick Stephens said earlier this
week that the Reserve Bank had long taken a sanguine view,
calling the pace of house price rises "modest" and predicting
the market would soon cool.
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