Live-streamed video from the RBNZ press conference with Governor Graeme Wheeler

Fascinating stuff when you compare New Zealand's housing, debt, savings and consumption patterns internationally.

Canada tops the list of overvalued housing markets, with an overvaluation of 60% from historical averages, followed by Belgium, New Zealand, Norway and Australia. At the bottom: the U.S., Greece, Germany, South Korea and, last of all, Japan, with an undervaluation of 39%..... 

Canada, for example, is very open to foreign investors, which means that in an age of unprecedented global liquidity cash-rich wealthy individuals who are looking for places to park their excess funds can do so in its housing market far more easily than in Japan, with its closed system......

Meanwhile, the U.K.’s relatively high seventh-position rank underscores concerns that its recent economic revival has been overly driven by government incentives to encourage mortgage borrowing and that such policies have meant that the housing market prematurely recovered from its 2007-2008 collapse before it had flush out its excesses.

By contrast, Germany’s and Japan’s sluggishness speak to the fact that consumers in those societies are still incentivized to prefer savings over spending.

In fact, it’s possible to read Deutsche Bank’s rankings as a snapshot of the world’s economic imbalances.

Bernard could you ask a question to Wheeler that addresses this global imbalance between countries consumption and savings? And how this relates to over and under valued housing.

By contrast, Germany’s and Japan’s sluggishness speak to the fact that consumers in those societies are still incentivized to prefer savings over spending.