There are a couple of notable things about the latest inflation result.

According to the ABS, annual inflation fell to 4.9% in July, down from 5.4% in June and the high of 7.8% in late 2022.

This is good news overall, because it means the level of price increases in many items, including food, is abating.

And it’s good news from the viewpoint of mortgages, because it makes further increases in interest rates increasingly unlikely.

With the rate of inflation coming down fast, it appears that the brutal one-year barrage of constantly rising interest rates is over.

But the other notable thing about the inflation number is that it was much lower than predicted.

And by that I mean much lower than predicted by the nation’s gaggle of bloated, over-rated and over-paid economists who seem to struggle to forecast anything with any level of accuracy.

The consensus view among the nation’s leading economists was that the rate of inflation would fall from 5.4% in June to 5.2% in July. But it actually dropped to 4.9%.

Once again, the nation’s high-profile economists not only got it wrong, but spectacularly wrong.

And it raises the question, yet again, as to why we should listen to these people and why mainstream media continues to give their forecasts credibility.

Never in the history of human endeavour have so many people made so much noise for so little purpose.