📈"Inflation" Edition

Bad news: inflation is back. Worse news: it brought friends: gas prices, war, tariffs, and the creeping realization that your paycheck is now more of a suggestion than a solution.

The inflation rate rose to 3.8% in April, the highest in three years, driven largely by gasoline—which is up nearly 30%—because nothing stabilizes an economy like a “ceasefire” in the Iran war that exists mostly in press releases.

Economists had been hoping for rate cuts this year. That adorable optimism has now been gently placed in a box and buried six feet under ground. The Federal Reserve is also in a box—just in time for Trump appointee Kevin Warsh to take the helm—and it’s debating whether to raise them again, which is a bit like hoping for dessert and being handed the bill instead.

Meanwhile, everyday life has become a thrilling game of “guess which essential item is now a luxury.” Coffee is up, vegetables are up, airfare is up, tomatoes, for reasons that now include geopolitics, weather, and tariffs, are apparently aspiring to join the precious metals market.