Stephen Koukoulas

We've all got a laundry list of things that could have, should have, would have been done.

But look, we...

I have to acknowledge that there's a political imperative here, that they've done a pretty good job.

The budget bottom line is okay.

We've got deficits of only 1% of GDP.

That's low on an international comparison.

One way that I always judge a budget

is look what happens to financial markets.

Because if the financial markets think, oh my goodness, this is a horrendous or a fantastic budget.

And as I look, here we are however many hours after the budget was delivered.

The Aussie dollar is sort of ticking along.

ASX futures have moved in line with US futures.

Bond yields are up a couple of ticks, but so are they globally.

The markets sort of had a big ho-hum about this.

And even though there's a lot of discussion still to be had about

the capital gains tax issues for investments and investments in stocks and those sorts of things as well.

That's probably going to play out over weeks rather than hours.

The market reactions, oh, a bit of ho-hum.

Let's get on with monitoring what's happening in the real economy.

Kind of like, no, sort of more like a bad hangover because, and I dare say this one has been framed in a rapidly moving undercurrent.