this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
7 points (100.0% liked)

Aotearoa / New Zealand

1651 readers
5 users here now

Kia ora and welcome to !newzealand, a place to share and discuss anything about Aotearoa in general

Rules:

FAQ ~ NZ Community List ~ Join Matrix chatroom

 

Banner image by Bernard Spragg

Got an idea for next month's banner?

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

This is probably a stupid question but... So I understand how the government uses the OCR to increase interest rates and drive inflation down by reducing the borrowing in an economy. What I've been thinking about recently though is could there be a mechanism whereby instead of the interest rate increase being solely at the cost of the borrower (rate increases > you pay more interest on the same total borrowing > total cost of borrowing over time increases) that some 'minimum principal' payment rate was increased instead.

So the idea being that if the OCR was 0.25 in 2020 and is 5.5 now, could that 5.25% increase (and thereby the decrease in overall borrowing) have been achieved through a minimum principal pay down rate instead. Borrowers are still paying more and therefore borrowing less, just that the banks and reserve bank don't have a greater take and new Zealanders end up with less total borrowing.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's stopping people taking on additional debt from other providers though?

[–] IGuessThisIsMyName@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They would still need to be able to service that debt though right? It's the same thing stopping people taking on additional debt ATM.

[–] w2qw@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago

Most people aren't using all their borrowing capacity. What stops those people taking on more debt is the unattractiveness of higher interest rates.