The cash rate was raised on a total of four occasions, with the aim of achieving a moderation in demand, which is an obvious necessary condition for reducing inflation over time. In reaching these decisions, the Board naturally took careful account of the unfolding events in global financial markets.
I will not recount the details of those events again now – I and many others have talked at length about them before. I am sure we will return to them in question time. As a daily participant in financial markets, the Reserve Bank was in a position to observe developments very closely.