Is our monetary policy stance right?

Having indulged in a little flight of fancy in my previous post about a stonking easing of monetary policy, it's time to get realistic again. So here's my latest occasional update to the actual stance of monetary policy - that old warhorse, the Monetary Conditions Index (the 'MCI'), which combines the level of interest rates and the level of the NZ$ into an overall measure (based on the RBNZ's monthly figures up to January, and current market levels for February).

Turns out, the flight of fancy may not have been so fanciful after all. Monetary policy, on this measure, is slightly on the tight side of average, and that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense at the moment: it's meant to be "accommodative" (as the RBNZ put it in the latest review of the Official Cash Rate). Unless as a central bank you're very confident in your call that everything's hunky-dory over a medium-term perspective, and that inflation will get back to around 2% on present monetary policy settings, you'd think the lesson from this graph is that policy should be starting to ease.

Which is also where the ANZ Bank has got to in their latest Market Focus, where they now think the RBNZ will cut the OCR by 0.5% this year (the publication isn't up on the ANZ website yet, but interest.co.nz have a commentary and a link to the publication itself). Interestingly, ANZ have their own 'financial conditions index', which is a different way of assessing the overall policy picture and which includes house prices, credit spreads and the NZ$: it's saying the same thing as the old MCI, namely that conditions have tightened recently. However you get there, the analysis is pointing towards the need for a lower OCR.