Brian Fallow: Interest rate rise as good as promised

Alan Bollard as good as promised another rise in interest rates yesterday.

Some of the blame might go to politicians liberally splashing taxpayers' money around as the price of a government-forming deal, on top of the extra spending already committed in the last Budget.

But the larger portion of the blame, it seems, lies with spendthrift households. That's you and me.

Incomes have risen through more jobs and higher wages, and on top of that there is the tendency for homeowners to borrow against rises in the value of their properties and spend that as well.

The result is an economy seriously out of kilter and off balance, he warned.

Inflation is on track to stay above 3 per cent until the end of next year, maybe longer. That alone would have Dr Bollard hitting the brakes.

And the combined effect of all that excess consumption by households has been the need to import over the past year nearly $12 billion of foreigners' savings to fund the spending spree.

That has pushed our net debt to the rest of the world to $124 billion. Servicing that debt takes nearly a month's worth of what we produce in a year.

Underpinning all this is the relentless rise in house prices. The latest boom is the biggest increase since the 1970s.

Dr Bollard has warned before, several times, that the upward trend in house prices cannot be sustained indefinitely.

So brace yourself for the inevitable correction.

That usually takes the form of a slowdown in economic growth - under way since the middle of last year - and a weaker dollar, making imports such as petrol dearer and leaving less to spend on other things.

In short the kind of hangover that comedian Billy Connolly once described as waking up wearing an internal balaclava.