Agree....if inflation isnt rising and rising fast (or going to) why does the OCR have to rise? funny but I thought the OCR was there to fight inflation which doesnt exist...and especially if the "market vigilanties" and doing that privately anyway.

Also there are the major external factors, 2010 looks a bad year for many countries; the USA still has bad (real) monthly figures and (real) un-employment is a staggering 17%, Greece is stuffed and could tear the EU apart, plus countries in the EU are weak, UK is in a bad way...Japan is weighed down with massive public debt...China looks like a huge capacity bubble waiting to burst (which is deflationary)....who wnats commodities when you are unloading capacity? especially when you have stocked up in raw materials? (in a second dip recession where does that leave OZ's raw materials exports?)

So all this points at boom times and hence inflation? Ijust dont see it.

One lot of mortgagee's are going to look like chumps IMHO by paying too much interest, either the fixed or the floating (me), I dont see it as me.

regards

regards

The only pathway now open for English to run down is slashing govt expenditure big time. It will be a tossup between votes lost and promised improvements in the future. For every 100 million chopped off spending, national will lose so much support. Trouble is the benefit to the economy of less govt waste does not show up as quickly to balance the electoral pain. Key and English may well be wishing they had started dishing out the pain 12 months ago. Now they are a whole year late and the 2011 election looks to be too close to act at all. That is why I expect the Feb 9th PM blather to be a 'clayton's' plan about an approach to change.

cost of living to increase ?wholesale suger price up 25%

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/cost-of-sugar-rising-thanks-to-global-s...

I think you have it all wrong, Roger. With the massive increases in money printing going on around the world, we will be importing a lot of inflation in the next year or two. However, the govt will probably have to start doctoring the published inflation figures - as they are in the US and elsewhere....just to keep the uneducated masses in the dark.
Second, the RBNZ actions will be irrelevant. We breathe on foreign capital, and the cost (interest) on that foreign capital is going to start ramping up in a big way soon. They couldn't care less about what Bollard does...he doesn't hold the real cards. He just possesses a printing press and a bit of plastic....and not even a single ounce of gold.
Like other central bankers, he could save the NZD by raising interest rates significantly. However, they won't of course. By the time they do, the currency and the economy will be toast.