Jim Power

It wasn't just lower inflation, it was lower prices.

But anyway, the whole Iranian war situation is...

It's showing no signs whatsoever of being solved in any sustainable way.

I mean, it's I just think at the end of the day, the Iranians are sitting over there thinking we have this guy literally over a barrel and we're not going to do anything at all to help his plight.

Let him stew in it.

So they really are on top of this at the moment, aren't they?

Mm-hmm.

You brought my attention this morning to a piece that was in The Economist magazine on Monday about the US productivity miracle.

And OK, the concept of productivity may sound a little bit geeky, but at the end of the day,

you know, it does boil down to the ability to produce more with the same labour, which is the key to prosperity.

And Europe and the United Kingdom have struggled big time with productivity for at least a couple of decades.

But the analysis done on Bureau of Labour is,

by The Economist to show that in the last five years, US productivity has jumped enormously.

It's the fastest pace in two decades for non-farm businesses in total.

Productivity is growing 2% per annum, up from 1% for most of the previous 20 years.

The Federal Reserve has just increased its long-run GDP growth potential for the United States from 1.8% to 2%.

And looking at over the last five years, the sectors that are driving this, it's the information industry, that's software, telecoms, publishing, filmmaking, 6% year on annual growth in productivity over the last five years.

professional services, management services growing strongly, the oil and gas sector growing strongly.

So there's a lot of very, very impressive statistics coming through there.

And the economist commentator who wrote the piece says that the U.S.