Index of misery: How the RBA’s inconsistency is harming households

The frustration of the Reserve Bank is palpable. It’s deeply annoyed at the way inflation is proving to be resistant to its punitive series of interest rate rises, which have smashed economic growth and forced most consumers to hunker down and run down any pandemic-era savings they might have had left to fund ever-diminishing demand.

It’s almost as if the bank was determined to lift interest rates yesterday and prepared a governor’s statement accordingly, only for the board to shy away at the last moment.

That statement listed the usual suspects the RBA likes to blame for inflation: “excess demand”, lazy workers (“Wages growth appears to have peaked but is still above the level that can be sustained given trend productivity growth”) and, in the August Statement