Daniel Ziffer

Now, there are some economists who think that that might be the end of this particular rate rising cycle.

Really?

You found them?

Well, I believe that's still the NAB bet, right?

They're saying just one more, and then they think that economic growth will be such a concern for the Reserve Bank that they might not be looking at further

rate hikes.

There are others like Westpac, for example, who believe that we could see two further interest rate hikes.

Now, this is getting into that real tension at the heart of the difficulty for the Reserve Bank, which is that on one hand, the price rises that they are seeing are too high for their comfort.

They are targeting, remember that crucial band, between 2% and 3%.

But they do not want to hike interest rates in such a way that it leads to large-scale unemployment.

It leads to

a lowering, a massive lowering of growth.

But it is so difficult for them to get this right.

What I'm so fascinated by is trying to work out how quickly they will be able to assess the so-called kind of second round, third round impact.

Because you're right, we've seen

obviously an increase in the price of fuel.

We've seen impacts when it comes to things like airline tickets.

We've seen some of the most immediate impacts, but it's those second and third round impacts where we start to see groceries start to rise a lot and then even services rise in price.

as this kind of ripples through the economy.

How quickly do you think the Reserve Bank is going to be able to make a determination of how high they need to go to try to get this under control?