This week Stephen and Ivan take credit for the Treasurer getting religion on debt and discuss inflation coming back within the Reserve Bank’s target range.   Discussed in this episode:

[0:42] Treasurer’s good/bad debt speech

[1:00] Stephen on infrastructure debt

[2:16] Morrison’s 2016 position

[3:43] Net operating vs net cash balance

[3:55] Jim Chalmers' Better Budgeting

[5:23] Operational vs capital budgets

[6:13] Stephen on 1Q17 CPI data

[6:24] RBA’s inflation target

[9:12] RBA early adopter of inflation targeting

[9:20] NZ pioneers inflation targeting

[9:37] Gold standard

[9:39] Monetary policy regimes

[9:44] Milton Friedman’s k-percent rule

[10:58] Nod to the monetarists

[15:40] Expansions don’t die of old age

[15:55] Wage-price spiral

[16:20] Japanese deflation

[16:47] Deflation and the Depression

[17:13] Disinflation

[17:34] Quantitative easing

[17:55] Calculating CPI

[18:42] Include housing in CPI?

[21:29] Unexpected brief 2016 deflation

[21:35] RBA cut following deflation

[22:28] Underlying inflation still subdued

[23:15] Inflation target review

Tweet at us @aicdirectors or message us on Facebook with feedback on the show or suggestions for upcoming topics.