Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:59 and sunset is 7:59 for 14 hours 0 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board’s Human Resources Committee meets at 5 PM.
On this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts receive a ticker-tape parade in New York City.
Nostalgia, however powerful, is not to be found in a yearning for the American economy of the 1970s:
Some readers may recall the misery of rampant stagflation in the 1970s. The fusion of inflation and stagnant economic growth destroyed millions of jobs while eroding virtually everyone’s purchasing power, ensuring there was no escape from economic pain for most Americans. Now, stagflation is returning after decades of dormancy. How pervasive will it become?
The person most responsible for answering that question is the Federal Reserve chairman, Kevin Warsh. The newly installed chair won his job by convincing President Trump that they shared similar perspectives on lowering interest rates, a move almost guaranteed to boost the economy in the short term, even if it risks economic calamity down the line. If history offers any guidance, how Mr. Warsh responds to Mr. Trump’s demands will have major repercussions on our future.
There’s no doubt that stagflation has returned. Inflation remains elevated, with July’s reading, released Wednesday, coming in at 3.4 percent year-over-year. Simultaneously, the economy is showing more and more weakness, with gross domestic product growth slowing to 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year. The job market has slowed. The housing market has stalled. And, of course, oil prices remain elevated. This is a classic case of a lackluster economy with problematic inflation.
See Phillip Braun (Clinical Professor of Finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management), Stagflation, the Scourge of the 1970s, Is Back, New York Times, August 13, 2026.
In Whitewater (landlords and lobbyists), in Wisconsin (Tom Tiffany and the WISGOP), and in America (anyone connected to Mar-a-Lago), men have flacked for a destructive economic policy (to the extent that their views can be described as a coherent policy at all). Centuries of advanced, proven economics have been ignored for nothing so evident as avarice.
The lives of many ordinary people are thereby wrecked for the sake of a few men’s self-enrichment.
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Forthcoming topics (in no decided order): A New Ethics Ordinance, a Whitewater Comparative Analysis, and Polling Places in the City.
People around the world gather to witness solar eclipse: