The effect of the current wave of out of cycle home loan rates rises on the economy "may not be large," a sanguine Reserve Bank of Australia governor told a social conference yesterday.But borrowers of all stripes may well look forward to rate cuts."Monetary policy is contributing to [a] rebalancing … with a very accommodative stance," Glenn Stevens told the Economic and Social Outlook Conference in Melbourne yesterday."It seems likely that an accommodative stance will be appropriate for some time yet. Were a change to monetary policy to be required in the near term, it would almost certainly be an easing, not a tightening. The rate of CPI inflation is clearly no impediment to easing. "Dealing with the most recent controversies on home loan rates, Stevens took time to add many comments."On some occasions, the Reserve Bank has moved the cash rate by more than otherwise to take account of changes in the relationship between the cash rate and other interest rates," he said."One such occasion was in May 2012, when the Reserve Bank Board wished to ensure that the economy received a worthwhile stimulus from a policy easing after a period in which lending rates had tended to increase even while the cash rate had been steady. The Board wanted to make sure that financial conditions would move to a clearly easier position than they had been when the cash rate had previously been lowered, five months earlier. "So on that occasion the Board decided on a larger than normal reduction in the cash rate."Stevens said "the question that is relevant for the Reserve Bank Board at present is, first and foremost, whether the recent changes in mortgage rates result in an effective set of financial conditions that is 'too tight' for the economy."The actions of those banks that have lifted mortgage rates over recent weeks reverse a little under half of this year's decline for floating rate mortgages for owner-occupiers and have no effect, at this stage, on the 15 per cent of loans with fixed rates. "For investors in housing, these actions and those a month or two earlier reverse the effects of this year's monetary policy easing but, of course, this was the lending that had been growing most quickly. Business loan rates have not risen."Measuring across the total loan book, the recent actions are the equivalent of roughly half of one 25 basis point monetary policy change. "They take back perhaps a quarter of the extent of interest rate easing seen since the start of this year, and a smaller proportion of the total easing in lending costs seen over the past two years. "We also note that a significant proportion of owner occupier households is ahead of schedule on mortgage repayments - in large part because these households did not lower their payments as interest rates fell. Most of these households are unlikely to need to part with extra cash each month as a result of the recent interest rate changes. "At this point,