Business Insider Australia put up this fascinating chart yesterday (full piece here).
The gist of the article was that the Fed won't want to repeat the premature policy-tightening mistake made by a range of central banks in 2010/11, including us (briefly and marginally) and the Aussies (for longer, and to a larger extent).
But I was more struck by that little rise in the yellow line at the right of the graph - our most recent tightening moves. They're beginning to look rather anomalous.
I know, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and inflation everywhere has turned out lower than reasonable people would have expected at the time (with the recently plunging oil price adding to the decline). And I've been as surprised as anyone - I also thought the strength of our economy would have led to higher rates of inflation (especially for non-tradables) than have actually occurred.
So I'm not pointing fingers. But on a purely objective basis, knowing where we are now, with a slowing economy and inflation less of a threat than expected, I do wonder whether we've tightened too much, too early.
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