Citing Peter Costello, the chair of the Future Fund, which covers pension liabilities for Australian public servants, Reuters reports, criticized the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) for giving "wrong" inflation guidance.
Key quotes
"It's our belief that monetary authorities both in the US and Australia were caught napping with the surge in inflation, and now the rate rises are going to have to be much more significant than if they had begun to act earlier.”
"As rates rise, over the course of this year and into next year, we would expect that equity markets will be soft.”
“Australia "came late to the tightening of (monetary) policy.”
The RBA's earlier guidance that rate increases would not be needed until 2024 was "wrong".
The money the RBA spent buying bonds to intervene on the bond market was "wasted".
“It wasn't a very good chapter for the Reserve Bank. We hold governments to account. We've got to hold central banks to account too.”
Market reaction
At the time of writing, AUD/USD is trading at 0.6861, adding 0.18% on the day. The pair remains little changed on theese comments.