Nassim Khadem

because it's driving up oil prices, obviously there will be an inflationary effect there.

Exactly.

And I mean, also, let's not forget, even looking back at the February data, there's still massive cost of living pressures.

So the ABS reported a 7.2% rise in housing prices as the biggest driver of inflation in the year to February, followed by a 3.1% rise in food and non-alcoholic beverage prices.

And, you know, as we look forward to think of the lift in petrol prices, if there's been a 45% lift, that will add about, economists are saying, about 1% to March quarter inflation.

And that's assuming that prices stay around the current levels, right, about $2.45, $2.50 for the rest of the month, which is not the case in many cities already.

And, you know, the question is also whether this war is protracted.

whether that leads to countries falling into recession.

But these are all unknowns as to how it's going to continue and feed into the inflation numbers and therefore then rates.

Exactly.

And I mean, you know, obviously another rate rise in May will be after the next set of quarterly inflation figures due out in late April.

But also in the past, whenever inflation has spiked, we've not seen a massive loss of jobs.

So if

it is a situation where this war is prolonged, if it's a situation where you start seeing countries face a recession, then that does create so much more uncertainty.

It does create a real headache for the Reserve Bank because as soon as it starts feeding into people's sense of security, their jobs, that's where it becomes a really difficult thing where you

on the one hand, have to tackle high inflation, but at the same time, you can't keep raising rates to the point where people can't function and can't hold jobs.

So, you know, let's hope it doesn't get there.

But there is certainly a lot of concern about how this all plays out in the coming weeks and months.

My absolute pleasure.