Bond yields collapsing
No doubts what is pre-occupying the minds of many financial observers at the moment.
The rising interest rates story - which was always being rather over-egged - appears to be well and truly over.
In Australia, meanwhile, yields are plummeting to record lows right across the board.
Note how even the 3s have now sunk way below the official cash rate.
If charts are more your thing, the red line below shows the 3-year, and the grey line denotes the 10-year, both of which are now at the lowest level on record.
This has been quite an amazing collapse since the early part of November.
Markets have been pricing that the Reserve Bank won't cut interest rates until later in the year.
And market measures of inflation expectations have crashed to shockingly low levels, suggesting that financial markets believe the Reserve Bank isn't serious about returning inflation to the target range.
As Stephen Kirchner points out, the nominal variables tell you most of what you need to know.
Growth in the economy seems likely to slow to levels pointing well below earlier forecasts by next quarter.
It's therefore hard to see how inflation can credibly get back to the target range in the next round of forecasts.
And thus rate cuts could be on the table sooner rather than later.
One positive, at least, is that fixed mortgage rates have already been falling.
