Michael Thompson

This is the person in the middle who's kind of doing all the deals.

Iran's foreign ministry said that the timing of the signing was unclear, though it did suggest that a signing was likely.

I love that you found a silver lining within the low-grade uranium, that it is in fact low-grade and not high-grade, so it's all right, not weapons-grade perhaps.

I suppose what I'm interested in here, Sean, is what happens if the deal is signed in terms of the flow-on effects of that?

How long is it going to take for drivers to feel the impact via kind of lower oil prices?

What does it mean for inflation broadly and then interest rates?

There's a lot of things that will be affected by this.

Wow.

So really, the reopening of the strait is just step one.

It's the critical step one, but it is a very long road ahead.

Yeah, that's well put.

So obviously still pressure on inflation and interest rates.

Having said all of that...

There are a growing number of market economists who now believe that interest rates are on hold and that the next move may well be down ahead of tomorrow's interest rate decision from the Reserve Bank.

Money markets are pricing in, what, about a 60% chance of a rate hike later this year, though that has been declining as a jump in unemployment, everything we've been talking about, the weak consumer and business sentiment, high energy prices, a faltering housing market.

Put it all

together.

That's kind of in part thanks to the federal government's budget.

All of these things are combining to hit the economy.

I find that remarkable that you can have people looking at the same, essentially the same kind of data set and the same kind of circumstances in the world and come up with such completely different predictions.