A week ago, the RBNZ worried a lot that the banks were shafting customers by not passing along the Reserve Bank's interest rate cuts. Of course, banks do have to compete for deposit funds; it's not like they can underwrite mortgages based on overnight borrowing at the RBNZ.
This week, the RBNZ instead is worried that recovery in the New Zealand housing sector may presage a return to our old "borrow and spend" ways: in other words, we need to do something to encourage more saving and less borrowing. What is it that affects that...ah, right. The interest rate. So a week ago the RBNZ berated banks for interest rates being too high; today, Bollard berates consumers for responding to interest rates being too low. Which is it? I suppose that new information could have come into the system in the interval about housing sector recovery, but it would suggest that perhaps folks oughtn't have been so quick to criticize the banks in the first place.
