The hot pink tinge of Barbenheimer mania is bringing with it a cautious glow of optimism about the outlook for the economy, both here and abroad.
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While figures show Australian inflation in the June quarter remained way too high at 6 per cent, they also confirmed it is coming down, as it is in much of the world.
From Tuncurrey to Texas to Tashkent, price pressures - though still high - are easing.
The International Monetary Fund reckons almost 90 per cent of countries it monitors will see a decline this year, helping relieve some of its earlier gloom about the global economy. It now expects world output to increase by 3 per cent this year and in 2024.
This is important for Australia's inflation fight because less costly imports will help hold down prices on shop shelves.
There are already signs that this is happening.
The cost of tradeable goods (those most heavily influenced by international competition) grew at an annual pace of 4.4 per cent last quarter, down sharply from 6.1 per cent in the March quarter and a huge fall from 8.7 per cent late last year.
Australian National University macroeconomist and former Reserve Bank of Australia board member Warwick McKibbin said more than half of the surge in inflation last year was due to offshore price pressures.
Now that many of these costs, such as for fuel, manufactured goods and transport, have eased to around pre-pandemic levels, that will be helping lower inflation here.
![Treasurer, Jim Chalmers press conference. Picture by Keegan Carroll Treasurer, Jim Chalmers press conference. Picture by Keegan Carroll](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/202296158/cedc3a00-801f-479b-93b3-ea0c069bb459.jpg/r0_256_5000_3078_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
But what about home-grown cost pressures?
The news here, too, is promising.
Reserve Bank fears of an unsustainable acceleration in wages that drives up inflation is yet to materialise.
Despite an exceptionally tight labour market, as evidenced by a very low 3.5 per cent unemployment rate, data show aggregate incomes growth of around 4 per cent.
This, in turn, is helping restrain services inflation, which is the central bank's other great concern.
By their nature, services are less exposed than goods to international competition. Because they are more labour intensive, the are more heavily affected by rises in wages.
This difference is showing up in the ABS data. Growth in the price of services has accelerated past that of goods and climbed by 6.3 per cent in the June quarter, its fastest pace since 2001.
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But even here, things are not as bad as they initially seem.
As EY Oceania chief economist Cherelle Murphy points out, the quarterly rate of increase in service prices has been slowing, from above 2 per cent late last year to less than 1 per cent in the June quarter.
As Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned, the war to tame inflation is far from over.
The Reserve Bank currently reckons it will take almost another two years for it fall within the 2 to 3 per cent target band, though many tip updated central bank forecasts due out on August 4 will be more optimistic.
Either way, a growing number of economists think interest rates are now high enough to get the job done.