Reserve Bank needs to raise cash rate to 4.1 per cent, expert says

But that won't stop it tightening even further.

The brutal fact is although millions of Australians are being painfully squeezed by high inflation and rising interest rates, not enough of us are cutting back on spending as much as it is needed to help bring inflation down.

At least, not yet.

Partly this is because many accumulated substantial savings during the COVID lockdowns and are still drawing on them to support their spending.

And rising rates are effectively delivering a payrise to those who rely on interest from bank deposits and other investments for their income.

The tight labour market is also not helping. While workers are very understandably exercising their newfound bargaining power to win bigger payrises, their increased spending power is helping keep prices higher for longer.

Some, such as Betashare chief economist David Bassanese, think Treasurer Jim Chalmers also needs to do more to rein in government spending.

The particular cruelty of the situation is that, by the Reserve Bank's own reckoning, a substantial proportion of the inflation problem has been created offshore.

In its quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy the central bank included an analysis of the sources of the current inflation problem.

It found supply shocks in the global economy, including the impact of the war in Ukraine on energy and food markets, and the disruption to supply chains caused by COVID-related restrictions, accounted for anything from half to three-quarters of the pick-up in inflation.

That still means demand in the local economy is responsible for up to half the nation's inflation problem and, while the RBA can't do much about international price pressures, it can use the only tool in its locker - interest rates - to ease domestic demand.

The good news is the growth in international price pressures appears to have peaked as central banks around the world (with a few exceptions) have lifted interest rates well above the emergency low levels reached during the pandemic.

And the Reserve Bank appears confident inflation has peaked in Australia, too.

But the central bank got a shock at the strength of inflation in December, as indicated by its preferred measure of trimmed mean, which reached 6.9 per cent.

The measure, which excludes volatile items like food and fuel, is seen as a better guide to the extent of price pressures in the economy than headline inflation, and its strength appears to have the central bank a little unnerved.

Australia's inflation is high and broadly-based, it says, which is a not a promising place to be in when there are also signs wages are accelerating.

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From its own liaison work with business, the RBA reckons wages in the private sector are already growing around 4 per cent, while around one-third of firms reported pay increases above 5 per cent.

Deutsche Bank Australia economist Phil Odonaghoe reckons this could go a long way to explaining why the Reserve Bank has become so hawkish.

He predicts the cash rate will need to reach 4.1 per cent before it will have done enough.