Larry Williams Drive

I went for a walk along K Road the other night and saw something I hadn't seen in the longest time: A new restaurant.  I didn't even step inside but it felt like a drink of cold water for a parched man in the desert. When was the last time I saw one of those?  It is, of course, a rarity. And hardly a sign that the entire economy is ready to take off. The number of new restaurants in that part of town is still comfortably outnumbered by the number of 'For Lease' signs. But as the Reserve Bank prepares for tomorrow's call on the OCR, two things give me optimism that they'll be leaning more towards 50 basis points than 25.  The first is if the economists are right, inflation is already back down within the target band or maybe even closer to 2% than we dare to hope.  It occurs to me that migration inflows have really significantly slowed over recent months. That in turn is reducing pressure on rents, which was one of the stickier parts of the inflation picture over the previous few quarters.&