02/9 Indices, page-19

Politicians and bureaucrats seem to among the least able people at making sound policy, despite being among the most highly paid people. Here's this month's howler. RBA interest rate decision on Tuesday 24 Sept. ABS monthly CPI figures on Wednesday 25 Sept. Should be the other way round.

The last week has seen politician pseudo-economists (imo) Chalmers, Swan and Conroy, as well as the usual cohort of professional pseudo-economists in the populist media, all attacking the RBA for having interest rates set too high, whereas in reality interest rates have been ridiculously low since covid, causing property prices and rents to rise too high and preventing inflation from falling as fast as in other countries. I wonder what proportion of people who say that interest rates are too high also have large mortgages.

Another week with yet another false dawn for bears. (Btw, imo the sunspot number is far too high for there to be a correction.) Nothing seems to be capable of triggering a proper market correction atm. The only prediction that I can come up with is that I think that the most likely trigger for a big correction will be the USA election results early in November. What choice do voters have? Donald Gump or Kamala Lala? The most disturbing aspect of this is that both candidates may be better choices than the current incumbent.