The Australian Financial Review is quick off the market with their take on RBA Governor Stevens speech today:
- In signs of a major shift in thinking within the bank, Mr Stevens indicated that the weaker growth of recent years - which has seen the jobless rate rise above 6 per cent and helped blow-out the federal budget deficit - may be well be the economy's new normal.
- The comments are a dramatic challenge to the May federal budget's core longer-term assumption that gross domestic product growth will rebound to and remain at 3.5 per cent for five straight years later this decade.