I was having a good old debate with a mate at the weekend about interest rates.

We're of the age where, mortgages are a thing.

In Auckland, quote a bog and annoying thing.

Paying them down is the aim of the game.

Now this mate of mine knows a bit more about this stuff than I do and watches the markets closely. He's worried about the middle of the year - potentially this recovery if that's what we can official call it yet - coming to a bit a standstill/abrupt halt.

We've spoken before about elections putting the kaibosh on growth. We've spoken about Bill English's comments about our recovery, unlike across the ditch, coming isn't spite of a rebound in house prices.

In Australia, everything's how. The weather. House prices. Inflation. Growth. Employment.

It's like they're on a different hemisphere to us.

There was a good podcast talking about some of this, Of Interest, with a Westpac economist.

The RBA'S rate is now 3.85%. Ours is 2.25%. It's been about 15 years since there's been such a big gap between the two.

We usually cycle together most of the time but we have drifted apart to the point where one's so far over the hill, we can't see each other anymore.

This is all by design, of course. We were way more aggressive. We engineered a recession to crash inflation.

They went a loft softer to take into account employment.

They have a duel mandate. The coalition got rid of ours.

The Aussies are now upping rates again because their inflation is taking off again. Ours has a mild case of fever but nothing like there's at early 4%.

The question anyone thinking about this stuff, with a mortgage is asking themselves, is this.

Would you swallow a bit of inflation to have an economy that's actually firing?

In other words, in future, would you rather this was handled the Aussie way? Or the Kiwi way?

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