No Bull(ock)
RBA governor Michele Bullock today refused to be drawn into the debate over Jim Chalmers' recent comments on interest rates, instead imploring people to focus on the real enemy: inflation.
Might Michele Bullock be the only adult left in the economic room? The Reserve Bank governor took a no nonsense approach this afternoon, after days of frantic media coverage of Jim Chalmers’ weekend comments that higher interest rates are “smashing the economy”.
“I have no comment to make on the comments,” she said after delivering her first speech to the Anika Foundation, a mental health non-profit. This made her one of the few figures in the economics fraternity, or federal politics for that matter, who has not weighed in on the treasurer’s inflammatory but not incorrect turn of phrase.
Asked whether reports the RBA and the federal government are “at war” were accurate, she shut them down, saying: “He’s doing his job and I’m doing mine, I wouldn’t use those sorts of words”.
Capital Brief has been sceptical this week of the validity of the media pile-on, and Bullock herself refused to be drawn into it. She even chose not to return the favour by blaming the government’s fiscal policies for worsening the cost of living.
