Two weeks ago, Sari and I took a vacation - an extended road trip down the East Coast as far as Charleston and then inland back to New York through the Appalachians. On a long driving stretch on the way back, we stopped at a Jersey Mike’s just off the highway for some much needed nourishment. As we were waiting to pay, a talkative man, in the height of good humor, was ordering behind us. I don’t know if he knew anyone working at the store, but he acted as if he did. He said he’d just got a job after five months searching and he was going to celebrate - by buying two big subs - one for that evening and another to put in the fridge for the next night.

The Financial Accounts of the United States is a quarterly Federal Reserve publication containing a great many large numbers but very little commentary, presumably because the authors feel the numbers speak for themselves. And the numbers do speak rather loudly.

In 19th century English novels, so-called “quarter days” often provided a chronological backdrop to the plot. A relic of medieval times, the quarter days were Lady Day (March 25th), Midsummer Day (June 24th), Michaelmas (September 29th) and Christmas Day (December 25th). These were the dates upon which rents were paid, leases expired and employment contracts took effect. Quarter days were often when the landlords of Austen expected their income, the impoverished families of Dickens had to cough up their rents and the farmworkers of Hardy would move on to their next place of employment. In short, they were days of accounting and reckoning.

On Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee will hold hearings to consider the nomination of Kevin Warsh to be the next Fed chair. His confirmation will likely be delayed until the Justice Department’s investigation into Jerome Powell is fully resolved. Despite this, Mr. Warsh’s answers to the committee’s questions could shed light on the future direction of monetary policy.

Evening newspapers, like vinyl records and rotary phones, are fading relics, all victims of the smartphones into which humanity is gradually burying its consciousness. But once, they were a vibrant part of daily life.

Growing up in Dublin in the 1970s and 1980s, there were two evening papers, the Evening Herald and the Evening Press. Sold at every street corner, they would distract commuters from the damp and discomfort of the tight-quartered, smoke-filled upstairs of double-decker buses.

A year ago this week, the President announced what he described as “reciprocal tariffs” on goods imported from all major U.S. trading partners. These tariffs, which were much broader and higher than expected, led to an immediate and sharp decline in stock prices.

In a speech last April, Fed Chair Nominee, Kevin Warsh, lamented the mission creep of the Federal Reserve as well as the Fed’s expanded balance sheet. Many academics agree with Warsh – the Fed has often tried to address problems that are not within its remit and with tools not suited to their purpose. Some of these endeavors have inflated the balance sheet which, rather like a Swiss army knife, is a tool used for many tasks, none of which it does particularly well.

One of the benefits of my marathon training is that, most weekends, I get to jog over the Newton and Wellesley hills with my running buddy, John, who happens to be a financial advisor. Over the course of three hours we solve the problems of the world, reviewing them with dour pessimism at the start of our run and assessing them with breezy optimism later on, as the running endorphins kick in.

Three weeks ago, I wrote an article entitled Detangling Solution for the Economic Outlook in which I outlined a baseline forecast for 2026 and into 2027, amidst many distortions and entanglements in economic data and trends.

So much has happened since then, including a raft of new economic numbers, the Supreme Court’s decision on IEEPA tariffs, and, most seriously, the start of an all-out war in the Middle East, that it makes sense to go through the exercise again, or, as the marketers of hair products might say, “rinse and repeat”.

On Friday, the Supreme Court released a long-awaited decision, ruling that the President’s imposition of tariffs, using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, otherwise known as IEEPA, was illegal. The President held a press conference that afternoon and issued a proclamation announcing a general 10% tariff on imported goods, using a different statute and promised to invoke a third set of statutes to replace the overturned tariffs on a more permanent basis. On Saturday, he announced that the 10% tariff rate was being raised to 15%.