Australia's central bank mangles message on A$, rates
The Australian central bank’s attempts to talk down its currency have backfired as markets have pushed up both borrowing costs and the dollar on a view its easing cycle may be over.
The Australian central bank’s attempts to talk down its currency have backfired as markets have pushed up both borrowing costs and the dollar on a view its easing cycle may be over.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) would desperately like to see the Australian dollar much lower to help the country cope as a decade-long mining boom crests. That is a major reason it chopped interest rates to a record low of 2.5 per cent last month.
And it concluded its September policy meeting this week with another plea for the dollar to fall further to help “rebalance” the economy.
Missing from its statement, however, was an explicit acknowledgement that there was still scope to cut rates further if needed, given a benign inflation outlook.
The accent on the currency instead of rates led investors to suspect that the RBA had shifted toward a more neutral policy stance, and even perhaps that it was done easing altogether.
The result was almost certainly not what the central bank intended. The market rushed to price out any chance of rate cuts and now is even hinting at a future hike, which in turn has shoved the Aussie sharply higher.