The Reserve Bank of Australia has continued to push to drop inflation by raising key interest rates throughout the country.
They have done this in an effort to slow consumer spending and to cut inflation and the information that the commodity prices are booming has helped to move those rates even higher.
As reported by News.com.au, Bill Evans who is Westpac's managing director in economics said, "While inflation will remain high through 2008, we do expect clear moderation in domestic spending which will give them the comfort that no further tightening is required."
Another area hit by the credit crunch is the reverse mortgage industry in Australia. Numbers grew in 2007 by 34%. Yet new sales fell in the second half. This happened when the global credit squeeze hit lenders.
At the end of 2006, the total loan book was A $1.51 billion.
This moved up to A $2.02 billion or 33,700 reverse mortgages. Yet in new sales, which are sometimes also called settlements, for the current year have only increased A $466 million, which is a 10% decrease below where these numbers were in the past.
