Business, Economics and Finance

The reality is these shiny stone benchtops are not a necessity and too many of our tradies who work with them are getting sick or dying, writes Adele Ferguson.

Dr Angela Jackson from Impact Economics says it's good news the economy appears to be slowing and that consumers are responding to interest rates in the way that the Reserve Bank desires.

Friday Finance with David Chau.

Nearly 97,000 people have contacted the Australian Financial Complaints Authority in the last 12 months, a record rise of 34% on the previous year.

The odds of the Reserve Bank increasing interest rates at its meeting next week have fallen off the back of weaker than expected retail sales figures, while the US economy grew by 2 per cent.

An auction house says the nieces of a man who was killed after destroying three Japanese machine gun posts in 1942 decided to sell his medal because there was a lot of responsibility in safeguarding it.

Most Australians pay tax agents because they see it as easier and a way to maximise tax refunds. Yet our survey found most people who have used the myTax site found it easy, and plan to use it again.

The financial ombudsman has experienced a record rise in complaints as Australians voice their anger at scams, slow insurer claims handling, and buy-now-pay-later products.

Independent economist Chris Richardson says while interest rates in Australia may have peaked, the peak of pain for the economy overall is still to come.

The Reserve Bank is hiking interest rates — and hitting borrowers — to fight high inflation, but data suggests the fight is being undermined by big-spending baby boomers.

The Australian dollar jumped after the US Federal Board hiked American interest rates again.

The ASX set a 100-day high, after the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to a 22-year high.

There's a beacon of hope for stretched mortgage borrowers with the latest inflation figures taking pressure off the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates in August.

Head of iShares Investment Strategy Americas at BlackRock, Gargi Ghaudhuri, says while inflation in the US is cooling, it will remain higher than the US Federal Reserve's target for some time yet.

The biggest gains were the mining stocks which have nothing to do with Australian inflation but market economists still expect another rate hike.

Social media giant Meta has been ordered to pay the Commonwealth $20 million for misleading customers on data collection.

The headline inflation rate has fallen to 6 per cent in the June quarter, below expectations of 6.2 per cent

The Federal Court hears Meta used a free security app promoted as protecting data but the tech giant used it to find out "nearly everything" users were doing on their devices.

House prices are rising across the country despite the steepest rise in interest rates in history. Borrowing capacity has been cut for most households seeking a home loan, so the question is where is all the money is coming from?

Data from S&P Global reveals borrowers in Sydney's south-west and Melbourne's north-west are more than twice as likely to be at least one month behind on their repayments.

Impact Economics and Policy lead economist Angela Jackson says the composition of inflation has the Reserve Bank worried and services inflation will be key to future rate decisions.

Both the Australian dollar and the Australian share market moved higher.

China's economy is in serious trouble. The country's property sector, once a powerhouse of national economic growth, is in meltdown — and there are predictions of worse to come, writes Ian Verrender.

It's been dubbed the world's most indebted property developer: China's Evergrande recently revealed losses of $120 billion over the past two years. It's a sign of the growing property pain of Australia's biggest iron ore customer, as weak demand drags on prices. Bell Potter Securities' Giuliano Sala Tenna says an iron ore "soft patch" is coming – and investors should be watching closely.

Markets were flat ahead of Wednesday's all-important inflation release.