Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 88. Sunrise is 5:24 and sunset is 8:35 for 15 hours 11 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 41.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1776, church bells (possibly including the Liberty Bell) are rung after John Nixon delivers the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence.
You know, one might have listened to a few local men — landlords and lobbyists, mostly — and been told that after 1.20.25, Whitewater’s problems had been solved: manufacturing would return to this continent, prices would drop, rousting immigrants would solve housing shortages, and growth would lead us to a new golden age. Peace and prosperity.
It hasn’t worked out that way:
The global economy is set to slow sharply in 2026 after the war with Iran disrupted energy supply chains and triggered a fresh bout of inflation, the International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday.
The forecasts reflect the damaging toll from the decision by the United States and Israel to attack Iran this year. Those attacks spurred Iranian retaliation on energy infrastructure in the region, destabilizing a world economy that had already been rocked by the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Global output is poised to fall to 3 percent in 2026 from 3.5 percent last year, according to an update for the I.M.F.’s World Economic Outlook. That is slightly slower than the fund’s April projection of 3.1 percent growth, underscoring the protracted nature of the conflict.
The United States is projected to have even lower growth than the world average, as “[o]utput projections in the United States held steady from April at 2.3 percent.”
See Alan Rappeport, Global Economy, Hit by Iran War and Inflation, Faces Sharp Slowdown (‘The I.M.F. projected world output would fall to 3 percent for the year, a number pushed down by high commodity prices’), New York Times, July 8, 2026.
During the last decade, while controlling the policy of the old Community Development Authority, some of these same men admitted that their leadership of that public body left Whitewater as a low-income community. See A Candid Admission from the [Old] Whitewater CDA.
And yet, and yet, after mucking up this city’s policy in the last decade, these gentlemen have presumed to offer policy advice this decade that has been nothing more than a transparent attempt to limit the housing supply for their self-interest as incumbent landlords. Avarice is not credible policy advice. They’ve a right to speak; there is no reason to take them seriously on policy.
These gentlemen offer no economics worth considering, and every day of America’s present condition should make that plain to this city’s residents.
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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and a New Ethics Ordinance.
Mount Etna’s lava pours into neighboring summit crater: