Another mildly positive day on Wall
Street, with share prices up and bond yields rising to remove about half of the
previous night’s fall.

We commend David Bassanese and
Corinne Lim of The Fin for good sense on global interest rates today. “Benign
underlying inflation means no major central bank has a strong reason yet to push
up interest rates beyond levels considered ‘normal’.” And “The pleasant facts
about the current cycle are: long-term inflation expectations and core inflation
haven’t been much affected by high energy prices, reflecting in part public
confidence in the Fed’s inflation-fighting credentials, and labour costs, while
they’ve picked up, remain mild.”

Meanwhile on Wednesday, oil prices
jumped above $US63 a barrel as the net news flow in the Middle East was deemed
to be gloomy – correction “gloomier than usual”.

Read Henry’s full coverage of the world economy here.