Rich Harvey

But on the positive side, rising interest rates, Craig, is actually a good thing.

It shows that the economy is firing again.

We've come off this record low 0.1% cash rate, almost a zero cash rate.

And the RBA has said they want inflation back in that 2% to 3% range, and they've got to rein it back into control.

That's right.

Absolutely.

It's great to see the economy really thriving, unemployment's low, and everything's moving ahead again.

And they keep changing their forecasts.

Absolutely.

Well, I'm an economist by training too, Craig.

So whenever you point the finger, remember you've got four fingers pointing back.

But the RBA economists, they're not so good at forecasting things.

And same with bank economists.

They're not terribly good

forecasting, because remember when COVID first hit, they were saying property prices could drop 30%.

Well, in fact, prices rose around 38% throughout Sydney and significantly more in other areas of Australia.

So they tend to have a tunnel vision and they often think, a lot of them are just a one-track mind saying that interest rates are the sole factor determining whether property prices rise or fall.

Now, that's an incorrect assumption.

And that's why property economists get it wrong, because there's many, many assumptions to make and many, many moving parts.

If you look back over history, you'll see that there's been times where we've had very high interest rates and very fast-moving property prices upward as well.