But it is drawing a long bow to assume that interest rates will rise very much. And it is fighting history to assume they will stay high for long. Why? Because while New Zealand has had a spike in inflation, the rest of the world is experiencing the opposite. Covid variants are causing economies to go back into lockdowns, tempering the optimism that came with more widely available vaccinations. Lumber prices have collapsed recently, and supply bottlenecks for computer chips seem to be freeing up, bringing prices down. Accordingly, central banks globally are giving few signals that interest rates will rise any time soon. Ten-year interest rates in the US have fallen 40 per cent recently.