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And yet it's possible if the dollar doesn't drop to somewhere in the seventies.

One thing's for sure: interest rates won't rise before Christmas.

Next year.

In fact they've been dropping even though the Reserve Bank hasn't done anything for more than a year. One lender, loans.com, has a variable rate of only 4.48 per cent. Once that would have been an introductory offer. Or you can fix for five years at 4.93 per cent with UBank.

The gap here is so small – a couple of rate rises at best – that you may as well split the difference and fix half your mortgage; then it won't really matter what rates do.

For savers I'm afraid it just gets grimmer. On a five-year term deposit you're lucky to get 4.15 per cent. On an online savings account the best, no strings, rate is about 3.2 per cent.

Still, with rates unlikely to move for ages, and inflation likely to drop, be grateful for small mercies. The safest bet is a cocktail of maturity dates.

Anyway the word from the Reserve Bank is that "the most prudent course was likely to be a period of stability in interest rates" which, said often enough, as it has been, is almost convincing.

Except it also rules out rates falling, which they are. How can that be?

Because money is pouring in at the same time as the banks can raise it more cheaply offshore.

Besides, the first cab off the rank for a rise would be the US Federal Reserve, only because its official rate is almost zero and it's the one economy picking up rather than losing steam.

But it's joined all the other central banks, except ours, in fretting about how low inflation is. Australia's inflation is running at an annual rate of about 2.5 per cent, smack in the middle of the Reserve's target range of 2 to 3 per cent. But elsewhere inflation is struggling to keep its head above 1 per cent.

You'd think lifting inflation would be child's play. Print more money? The Fed, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have tried that. Lift rates and so increase business costs, then? No, this would be more than cancelled out by weaker demand, less investment and a stronger currency.

Unlike the Reserve's sanitised account of its board meetings, where apparently everybody gets on famously, the Fed doesn't pull any punches. Any disagreements it publishes.

So it was a revelation in the minutes of its last meeting that it's worried about the slump in Europe and Japan despite saying nothing in the press release at the time.

It turns out the Fed decided to leave this out because it might scare the market.

Frankly I can't see it, or anybody else, lifting rates next year even if it wanted to.

Whoever goes first gets a stronger currency, so you won't see the Reserve Bank at the head of the queue.

@moneypotts