The RBA yesterday gave a quiet warning on house prices when it noted that it said it “will be monitoring trends in housing borrowing carefully and it is important that lending standards are maintained.” It does not take Einstein to see where that ends up eventually. There’ll be a wave of macroprudential tightening to blow the froth off bubbly prices at some point. My bet is not until later in 2022.
As I wrote last week, that raises a sticky prospect for regulators. I see 2022 as a year of external shock for Australia. The COVID-19 iron ore boomlet will be over and prices should be reverting to $60-70 or so over the course of the year. That’s a nearly two-thirds fall from recent peaks and will constitute a pretty decent shock to nominal growth, national income and the budget:
The end of iron ore
