Carrington Clarke

Yeah.

This was the idea that the US was going to help guide, I think was the language Donald Trump used, guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Maybe they got two or three through, and now they've said, we're going to put that on hold while we try to negotiate again.

That is very important.

And obviously, she is one vote on the board, as the Reserve Bank likes to tell us.

They aren't the ones setting the institution itself.

There are independent members of the Reserve Bank board that determine monetary policy.

But I think you did get the impression from Michelle Bullock at that press conference that they've done these three hikes, offsetting the three cuts that we saw last year.

We do have another meeting in six weeks, but perhaps they will now wait to see the impact of these three rises, although anything obviously can happen in those six weeks.

And then perhaps the meeting after that, which is the August meeting, becomes again a live meeting in that it will also be accompanied by another statement of monetary policy.

This comes out quarterly.

They'll do another round of updating the figures, their predictions for where growth is going to be, unemployment is going to be, where the oil price is going to be, although, again, we'll probably be using the market assumption.

And so I think perhaps, yes, perhaps the next meeting isn't as critical.

It will be the one after it.

But let's wait and see what actually happens in the intervening period.

Yeah.

And Michelle Bullock at one point was asked the recession question and said, well, it depends what definition you're using.

Now, often we fall back on the technical definition of a recession, which is two quarters of negative growth, even though that sounds like a- I prefer contraction.

Contraction works better.

But that's the technical definition.