Oops! Iran Didn’t Fold

Trump faces the same problem in Iran that Putin does in Ukraine. They miscalculated the strength of their victims.

The current inflation rate of 3.8% means that the Federal Reserve will not drop interest rates anytime soon. The 17.9 % in energy costs reflects the 54.3 increase in fuel oil and 28.4 increase in gasoline due to the Blockades in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran survived the attacks by Israel and the U.S. and even has started to repair the damages. They seem uninterested in a settlement, and the cease-fire is threatened. The 2015 Agreement to Freeze Enriched Uranium seems like a good deal now since it was enforced with International Inspectors before Trump cancelled it.

Housing and Trade Policies (tariffs) also contribute to the increase in inflation. Tariffs are just another form of taxes, and Trump’s hand was called by the Supreme Court. In spite of this, the economy has continued to grow and so has demand for resources. The boom in server farms to feed the AI panic also has increased demands for energy and water. It isn’t just the folks along the Colorado River who are in short supply, North Carolina is beginning to feel the pinch on water supply due to drought conditions.

Well, the big bang in Beijing went smoothly in spite of not producing much in the way of significant results. Trump was on good behavior most of the time, and both sides didn’t seem to want a big blow-up. The fact is, China is holding most of the cards now.

With intransigent wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Ukraine, the world is in turmoil that impacts Europe and the Middle East even more than the U.S. Trump is bailing out the Pentagon with more billions while cutting domestic services. Those cuts may hurt at the mid-terms. Everyone is messing with the electoral system so that also may contribute to difficulties in placing odds on the mid-term elections just yet.

We’ve had 15 months of breaking nearly everything in the U.S. government and the economy, but it is still too early to see how that may settle out. The courts are continuing to intervene. They seem to be the only branch of government with any backbone. The efforts to remodel all of downtown Washington have hurt in the polls even though they haven’t accomplished much.

I’m beginning to wonder what public policy means anymore. We used to have task forces, committees, programs, planning, and budgets, but none of that seems to mean much anymore. That includes North Carolina, which was the only state to go most of the fiscal year without a budget.

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