Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:18 and sunset is 8:37 for 15 hours 19 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 89.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1963, President Kennedy gives his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, underlining the support of the United States for democratic West Germany shortly after Soviet-supported East Germany erected the Berlin Wall.
After tariffs, trade wars, the One Big Beautiful Bill, and forever wars excursions abroad, inflation rose yet again in May:
The Federal Reserve’s primary price gauge rose at its highest level since 2023, reinforcing the central bank’s recent tough talk on inflation.
Excluding food and energy, the personal consumption expenditures price index showed a 3.4% annual rate after rising 0.3% for the month, both in line with the Dow Jones consensus. The annual core reading was the highest since October 2023.
For the all-items reading, the PCE index showed inflation running at a seasonally adjusted 4.1% annual rate, the highest since April 2023, according to a Commerce Department report Thursday. On a monthly basis, the PCE accelerated 0.4%. The annual level was in line with the Dow Jones consensus estimate while the monthly reading was 0.1 percentage point below.
While Fed officials look at both headline and core rates, they generally consider the latter a better measure of long-run trends, particularly in light of this year’s inflation surge that was driven largely by an acceleration in energy prices tied to the Iran war that have slowly been seeping into other parts of the economy.
See Jeff Cox, Core inflation rate hit 3.4% in May, highest since October 2023, Fed’s preferred gauge shows, CNBC, June 25, 2026.
These economic developments must surprise people in Whitewater who relied on the city’s top-notch economic panel of landlords (some of whom live in the city and others of whom live beyond the city limits while charging rent to those who actually live in the city).
By contrast, the many thousands in the city who relied on sound, professional economic reporting from national publications saw this coming.
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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and a New Ethics Ordinance.
Europe’s extreme heat would be impossible without climate change, scientists say: