Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Assistant Governor (Financial System) Malcolm Edey participating in a panel discussion at the Australian Banking and Finance (AB+F) Financial Services Institute of Australasia (FINSIA) Conference in Sydney:
- Seeing some concentration of risk-taking in economy
- Risk-taking concentration particularly in housing
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Housing finance is becoming an increasing concern to the RBA and it does seem like they are on track to have implemented some form of macro-prudential policies toward the end of 2014 (don’t quote me on that timing, it’ll probably take longer).
The AUD is edging a little higher, seemingly in response to these comments (correlation not being causality notwithstanding, of course). If traders are thinking Edey might be hinting at interest rate hikes to combat run away investor financing in housing I suggest they think again, macroprudential tools will be first, not interest rate hikes.
BTW – housing finance for August was released today, data and more here
