![Lending to investors grew 27 per cent in the year to January, well above APRA's 10 per cent benchmark.](/web/20170314040412im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/o/b/u/g/i/image.related.landscape.460x307.guxd74.png/1489448016258.jpg)
RBA signals tighter standards unless banks rein in lending
The RBA is concerned that banks are loosening their lending standards for housing investors, and says it's prepared to act to tighten them unless the banks do so themselves.
Peter Martin is the Economics Editor for The Age.
The RBA is concerned that banks are loosening their lending standards for housing investors, and says it's prepared to act to tighten them unless the banks do so themselves.
The Reserve Bank is increasingly certain the global economy is picking up and increasingly determined not to cut its cash rate again.
The Reserve Bank of Australia has held the cash rate steady at 1.5 per cent amid concern about what another cut would do to the housing market and amid signs the economy is picking up.
The OECD has warned of a "rout" in Australian house prices leading to a new economic downturn, saying both prices and household debt have reached "unprecedented highs".
Australia has avoided a second consecutive quarter of negative economic growth, rising by 1.1 per cent in the December quarter and beating market expectations.
High earners are negatively gearing their way out of the Medicare levy.
Treasury boss John Fraser has implored Parliament to consider cutting the company tax rate, saying it would be "critical" to respond to international competition.
The Turnbull Government proposed company tax cut would cut national income for years before it boosted it and would never be self-funding, a new analysis from the Grattan Institute has found.
All high income Australians would pay the 1 to 1.5 per cent Medicare Levy Surcharge under a budget proposal that would raise a breathtaking $4 billion per year, more than 6 times the net amount saved in the first Turnbull budget.
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has no plans to cut interest rates, and worries that he did he would make an already indebted nation "more fragile".
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