Australian banks have come in for some ill-informed and unfair criticism - some of it I confess from me - for not passing on to their borrowers all the reductions in official interest rates. This little graph from the Wall Street Journal shows there is nothing unique about the local action. Borrowers around the world have similarly been denied all the benefit of rate reductions by central banks. The increased concern by lenders about getting a premium for risk has been greater than what the custodians of the official rates have given.

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