This Month
Bullock shouldn’t be reticent about calling out Chalmers on inflation
The governor has arguably leant a little too much on diplomacy in articulating where government policies have led to higher interest rates.
December 2025
With job market’s glass half full, don’t expect interest rate relief
Inflation, which is worryingly “sticky”, is likely to win the arm-wrestle against employment for the Reserve Bank’s attention this month.
November 2025
Blame Canberra circus for RBA’s high-wire act on rates and jobs
The “last mile” complications in getting inflation back to the middle of the target are about government decision-making rather than the RBA and monetary policy.
September 2025
RBA rate cut hopes crash into stubborn inflation
The central bank will leave the policy rate unchanged when it meets this week, employing the same logic that accompanied the “no change” at the July meeting.
Does AI explain the disconnect between Trump economy and Wall Street?
Following President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement back in April there were a plethora of dire prognostications. Yet equity markets are at record highs!
August 2025
The RBA will cut rates this week, but what comes next matters more
Balancing inflation at target while preserving labour market gains may get more difficult, in part due to the fallout from Donald Trump’s tariffs.
July 2025
Why the bond market got the RBA decision so wrong
Although the monetary policy board’s decision was a surprise and admittedly contestable, it is also defensible.
June 2025
Why Australia’s productivity ‘wart’ may limit interest rate cuts
In the longer term it is difficult to square sluggish productivity growth against inflation remaining close to the middle of the RBA 2-3 per cent target range.
May 2025
Why a ‘2’ in front of the RBA cash rate would be bad news
Far from being good news, multiple rate cuts by the year-end will be reflective of an economy in some difficulty due to the fallout from Donald Trump’s tariff war.
April 2025
In gold we trust, if the US dollar’s exorbitant privilege withers
While the president has walked back a mooted firing of Jerome Powell, the prospect of installing a more pliant chair next will keep market anxiety high.
Trump’s idiocy will put a 2 in front of RBA cash rate by end of year
Retaliatory tariffs are a supply shock that will not only see the global economy lurch into a deep recession but will do so with a near-term inflationary bias.
March 2025
John Lee is wrong. Trump has no good reason for trade tariffs
The benefits of free trade remain a lodestar for the economic orthodoxy, and policymakers need strong grounds for departure from that position.
February 2025
Time for a Bex and good lie down after RBA rate call
Amid the hyperbole and hysteria, I’m tempted to take governor Michele Bullock’s explanation of the finely balanced decision at face value.
Could Donald Trump’s tariffs trigger an Australian rate cut?
A global trade conflict might accelerate the RBA rate cut path rather than slow it down.
January 2025
CPI pushes the rate cut door wide open
RBA is overachieving on inflation and should “break on through to the other side” to reduce the policy rate in February.
A February interest rate cut is a goer if RBA changes one thing
Should the Reserve Bank downwardly revise its 4.5 per cent estimate of full employment, the first reduction will happen in just a few weeks.
October 2024
The sharemarket’s rally comes down to this missing ingredient
There’s a bad moon on the rise: bond yields are climbing and the gigantic US budget deficit is not being addressed in the presidential election, and it needs to be.
August 2024
Time to panic or the correction we had to have?
Investors’ hope for a Goldilocks scenario all came unstuck last week. But rather than succumb to hysteria, it’s better to recalibrate risk appetite.
June 2024
The RBA is walking a tightrope between inflation and jobs
As Reserve Bank deputy governor Andrew Hauser said on Thursday, it’s a mistake to change policy on one piece of data. But it is an egregious folly to ignore serial indications of sticky inflation.
April 2024
The RBA is still threading the needle
The Reserve Bank’s next policy move is more likely to be a rate cut despite the evidence seen in the stronger than expected March inflation figures, says GSFM’s Stephen Miller.
