Borrowers hoping for rate relief from the Reserve Bank on September 30 could be disappointed. The RBA governor made news this week noting that while inflation has fallen, prices have stayed high. Fears the inflation genie's not back in the bottle flared with the latest monthly consumer price index rising to 3 per cent over the 12 months to August, up from 2.8 per cent in July. The expiry of electricity rebates played a role in pushing up power bills, while rises in rents, food and non-alcoholic beverages also contributed. While the RBA has tended to place more weight on the quarterly inflation reading, the August data still has a number of big bank economists scaling back their rate cut forecasts for 2025. The third quarter CPI is released on October 29. Managing director at EQ Economics Warren Hogan says "inflation could start picking up from here and be confirmed early next year and the conversation about rate hikes could commence at that stage and we could see them delivered as early as next year. Now that's one scenario, I probably put it at about one in four." The official cash rate sits at 3.6 per cent. The program also looks at the AI boom, sometimes referred to as the "fourth industrial revolution" and one that comes with some of the greatest moral and regulatory questions of our time. Optus remains under fire over its triple-0 outage and copped a $100 million fine for breaching Australian consumer law. It's been good week for Shield investors, who thought they'd lost their retirement savings when the fund collapsed - they'll now get their money back after Macquarie, which hosted Shield on its superannuation platform agreed to pay them. The share market finished pretty flat for the week. Close of Business is presented by Alicia Barry.
#abcbusiness
Subscribe: https://ab.co/3yqPOZ5
Welcome to ABC News In-depth, where you'll find our long-form journalism and other videos to help you understand what's going on in the world around you.
Watch more ABC News content ad-free on ABC iview: https://ab.co/2OB7Mk1
For more from ABC News, click here: https://ab.co/2kxYCZY
Get breaking news and livestreams from our ABC News channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/NewsOnABC
Like ABC News on Facebook: http://facebook.com/abcnews.au
Follow ABC News on Instagram: http://instagram.com/abcnews_au
Follow ABC News on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abcnews
Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated.
#ABCNewsIndepth #ABCNewsAustralia