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That means the target range for the federal funds rate remains at 3-1/2 to 3-3/4 percent.

If there’s any surprise here, it’s that there were three dissenting votes of members of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, who wanted a rate increase, a 9-3 vote.

But keeping rates unchanged is what many anticipated.

Chart: Federal Funds rate over the past decade per FRED from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The official statement from the Fed, largely unchanged, notes that economic activity is expanding at a solid pace despite elevated uncertainty. They specifically blame, in part, the conflict in the Middle East.

They also note that inflation remains above the Fed’s 2 percent target, and they essentially pledge, quoting here, that they “will deliver price stability”, or in terms that we can all understand, they’ll bring inflation down. But they also stop short of promising a rate increase. In my mind, that’s an important distinction. Officials will have time to tee that up in the coming weeks, if they want.

So what does this mean?

The takeaway from the Fed’s decision suggests there’s just more of the same — at least for now — with the benchmark rate. The possibility, if not the likelihood, is that interest rates remain higher for longer. That’s fine for savers, parking money in savings accounts, especially high-yield savings, but it also means borrowing rates, including for credit cards and auto loans, remain elevated.

At his news conference, Chairman Kevin Warsh emphasized that the committee is steering away from providing clear signals on the possible future direction of rates.

Having decided to keep the benchmark federal funds rate steady, the Fed’s next scheduled opportunity to raise rates comes in mid-September. Among the things to watch are the conflict in the Middle East, energy prices, oil and gasoline specifically, which have contributed to inflation. They’ve also weighed on the 2026 economic outlook through affordability issues that tax pocketbooks and show up as a negative in surveys of sentiment and political opinion. That’s key heading into the November midterm elections.

We're adding The Brief, Briefly for moments like a Fed decision that can't wait for Monday and deserve a quick, plain-English explainer the day it happens.

If you're a regular subscriber, including our treasured paid subscribers, thank you.

We rely on your readership and hope you'll share this with anyone you think would appreciate what we do.

Thank you! — Mark

Affordability remains the top economic story of 2026, and with the midterms fewer than 100 days away, it’s fast becoming the top political story too. A new Economist/YouGov poll finds nearly four in ten voters name inflation, prices or jobs as their most pressing concern, sentiment that’s dragging on the president’s approval and giving Democrats an edge on the generic ballot. Also in this issue: the Federal Reserve meets July 28-29 for its second gathering under Chairman Kevin Warsh, and a look at why deep reading and independent judgment may be the most valuable skill you bring to your money decisions.

The Brief:

Midterms Looming, the Economy Is Still the Story

Much the same as it was in the 2024 election, affordability is the economy story of 2026, and with the midterms now fewer than 100 days away, it is fast becoming the political story too. A new Economist/YouGov poll (July 3–6, 2026) shows just how much that pressure is shaping the electorate, and it isn’t breaking well for Republicans.

Asked to name the most important issue facing them, 29% of Americans point to inflation and prices, more than double any other single issue. Add in jobs and the economy (11%), and kitchen-table economics account for roughly four in ten voters’ top concern. That’s the challenge for Republicans in this election cycle.

The underlying sentiment is grim. Just 25% call the economy “excellent” or “good,” while 73% say it’s “fair” or “poor.” Fifty-eight percent think the economy is getting worse, versus 16% who see improvement, and four in ten Americans believe the country is already in a recession.

That pessimism is dragging down the president. Trump’s overall job approval sits at 35%-61%, but his marks specifically on the economy are worse: 32% approve, 63% disapprove, including 50% who “strongly” disapprove. Even some 2024 Trump voters aren’t giving him credit on this issue.

Politically, it shows up on the generic congressional ballot, where Democrats lead 39% to 35%. Among independents who’ve made up their minds, Democrats hold roughly a two-to-one edge (29% vs. 16%).

None of this guarantees a wave. Some 15% of respondents say they wouldn’t vote at all, and the “not sure” cohort is sizable, especially among independents. Still, heading into this final stretch, the poll suggests Republicans are running against a headwind of economic pessimism that predates any single event of the campaign, giving Democrats an opening to make the election a referendum on affordability.

The persistence of the Middle East conflict and new tariffs announced affecting 60 economies likely mean inflation and elevated prices will continue on through election day.

Source: The Economist/YouGov Poll, July 3–6, 2026, 1,603 U.S. adult citizens, ±3.3% margin of error.

A quick note – and a light lift ask from me to you:

Quick favor: if something in this issue resonated, share it with one person who’d find it valuable. No algorithms, no ad spend. This grows entirely through readers like you passing it along. Thank you.

I’m grateful for our readers, and both our free and paid subscribers. I’ll soon be sharing some plans to add more value for those who are kindly paying for The Hamrick Brief. More to come on that.

Have a question? Reply to this email or write to hamrickbrief@gmail.com. I include reader questions in future editions of The Hamrick Brief.

The Hamrick Brief Dashboard: Where Things Stand

Also noting two of our favorite metrics:

• The HAPI (Hamrick American Prosperity Index): Ticked up to 59.1 in June (employment-population ratio 59.0% plus real wage growth of +0.1% year-over-year), a modest rebound from May’s 58.4, though still down from January’s 60.6.

• Misery Index: 7.7 in June (4.2% unemployment plus 3.5% CPI inflation), modest by historical standards and nowhere near the 20.7 stagflation-era peak of 1980.

What I’m Watching Next:

The Federal Reserve’s July 28-29 meeting, the second meeting under Chairman Kevin Warsh.. The Fed is expected to hold rates steady, but the recent “dot plot” showing roughly half of officials favoring a hike by year’s end raises speculation about what Warsh signals regarding the path ahead. With hiring cool, layoffs low and inflation still above target, the Fed’s next move helps to shape mortgage rates, credit costs, and the affordability squeeze heading into fall. The official announcement, expected to be short, and Warsh’s news conference, both loom on the 29^th.

The Competitive Advantage of Deep Reading and Deep Human Thinking

A cover story in the latest Atlantic magazine titled “The End of Reading Is Here” hit on something that’s been on my mind for quite some time.

Rose Horowitch argues we’re entering what amounts to a “post-literate” age, when sustained reading gives way to scrolling, video, podcasts, and AI summaries. To me, that puts “doom scrolling” in a whole new light.

She draws on media theorist Marshall McLuhan. He argued decades ago that electronic media would supplant reading’s central role in how we understand the world. McLuhan, who coined the phrase “the medium is the message,” believed we miss how the technology reshapes the way we think, learn, and relate to one another. Could he have possibly imagined just how ubiquitous screens would become?

I see this issue on display in public when a family is dining out and has decided that their children don’t need to interact with anything more than a tablet computer, avoiding conversations with their parents, or anyone else nearby.

Our attention spans seem shorter. Artificial intelligence can now summarize books we haven’t read, earnings reports we haven’t opened, and articles we never intended to finish. While the convenience is real and both good and bad outcomes are possible, I can’t help wondering what we give up in return.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s about our ability to function as a nation, a society, and an economy, even as technology races ahead. One reason I started The Hamrick Brief is a belief that readers are seeking understanding over outrage, and trusted information over questionable content.

Economists talk about human capital. That’s the knowledge, judgment, and skills that help make us more productive over time. We usually think of education, training, and experience. I’d add the ability to read deeply, think independently, and connect ideas that might otherwise seem unrelated. This skill has always mattered, but I suspect it’s becoming more valuable now.

We’re bombarded daily with headlines, hot takes, and algorithm-generated summaries. Markets can react to feeds before investors finish reading earnings releases. Political debates are shrunken to clips digested in seconds. Personal finance advice arrives in bite-sized videos promising easy answers to complicated questions. There’s a temptation to mistake information for understanding. They aren’t the same. It’s a race to the bottom with short attention spans.

So, what can we as individuals do to raise our own game in this environment?

My Takeaways for the Economy, Markets, and Your Money

• Read beyond the headline. Whether it’s an employment report, a Federal Reserve decision, or a market sell-off, the real story includes the details from which you can distill your own conclusions.

• Don’t outsource your judgment. AI can summarize information quite well most of the time. It doesn’t have your unique judgment which is a function of your unique experiences. It can’t determine your priorities, your goals, or your risk tolerance or the extent of losses you are willing to take. Technology can help you make decisions, but not make all of them for you.

• Take your time if the stakes are high. Buying a home, investing for retirement, changing jobs, or making other important financial decisions deserves thoughtful consideration. Rushing raises the risk of a potentially costly mistake.

• Invest in your own “human capital”. Read books or other long-form material. Read thoughtful journalism, even pay for it! Read history, biographies, or annual reports about companies you are interested in for investing. Knowledge compounds, just as savings and investments do. My late father had a great line: If you obtain formal education (and I’d add knowledge), no one can take that away from you.

• Ask more questions. This is one from the journalist “toolbox”. Curiosity is one of the best defenses against misinformation, poor financial decisions, and costly mistakes. It’s also one of the most valuable habits I’ve developed over the course of my career. Asking questions costs nothing more than the time required to pose them and to listen to answers. I like to say, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that journalists have a license to ask stupid questions. In truth, basic questions shouldn’t be viewed as stupid.

One of the themes I’ve returned to throughout my career is that some of the most important investments don’t show up on a brokerage statement or on our credit reports.

The importance of good judgment is one of them.

If Marshall McLuhan was right that we’d move into a post-literate age, then one of the greatest competitive advantages may turn out to be surprisingly old-fashioned: the willingness to read carefully, think deeply, and reach your own conclusions.

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve already done something increasingly uncommon. You’ve chosen to slow down and to think.

That isn’t just good for understanding the economy. It might be good for our brains and for humankind.

It may be one of the best investments one can make.

Not a Hot Take: Why I’m Still Not a Costco Member

Every so often, I wonder whether I should join Costco again. We were members decades ago, raising a baby who’s now more than 30 and living thousands of miles away. Costco has since become one of America’s most successful retailers, with a fiercely loyal following, so now and then I think it’s worth reexamining.

A few months ago, I ventured into their parking lot on a Saturday and felt like I was in a video game, or the bumper cars ride at a theme park. Costco might be competing with Trader Joe’s for the worst parking lots in retail. And some of the drivers… But I digress.

I’ve long admired how the company treats its employees, which is relatively well. Costco pays warehouse workers better than much of the retail industry, and its leadership usually comes from within. That’s not a guarantee of success, but it says something about a business that has earned respect.

The retail strategy is just as impressive. Costco perfected the treasure hunt, constantly rotating merchandise so a trip for paper towels can turn into finding a great bottle of wine, an outdoor grill, or a gadget you never knew you wanted. It’s smart merchandising that keeps customers coming back.

Ironically, that’s also why I’ve stayed away. I have enough “treasures” already as a senior. Probably too many.

The membership fee isn’t my deciding factor. Whether it’s $65 or $130 a year, that’s small potatoes compared with what most households spend once they’re through the door. The better question is whether shopping there actually saves you money, and the answer depends less on Costco than on who you are.

I’ll concede that for larger families, small businesses, or people who entertain often, buying in bulk can make sense: if everything gets used before it spoils, the lower unit price is a genuine savings. The same goes for gasoline, tires, prescriptions, and eyewear, where value doesn’t depend on buying more than you need.

Our household is different. There are only two of us now, and buying more isn’t the same as buying smarter; a lower unit price isn’t a bargain if some of it ends up in the trash. When grocery shopping elsewhere, I shop with a list and leave with what’s on it. Costco’s treasure hunt, which I admire as a business strategy, works by encouraging shoppers to discover and to buy things they weren’t planning to get. That’s ok if those purchases add value. If they don’t, a discount is still an expense that throws your household budget out of alignment.

That’s why, whenever I think about joining again, I’ve reached the same conclusion. And I really don’t like the real-world bumper cars thing.

There’s a broader lesson here. Personal finance is more than about finding the lowest price; it’s about developing and understanding your best habits. Optimal financial decisions sometimes aren’t the ones everyone else is making. They’re the ones that fit your household, your routines, and the way you actually live.

Are you a fan of Costco, or does it work for your household or business? Or do you just like the popular inexpensive food, like the hot dogs sold for $1.50 all these many years, at the front of the store? Please let me know via the comments section.

Mark, Actually

The Housing Market’s Lock-In Effect, Explained

I’ve been writing about the frozen nature of the housing market for months now, and it isn’t getting any better. The so-called lock-in effect is part of the picture.

This describes sellers who do not want to become buyers, keeping their properties off the market.

The mortgage rate lock-in effect describes a homeowner sitting on a low mortgage rate, perhaps at 3 percent or lower, who will not list the house, because selling means trading that rate for whatever the market offers today, likely north of 6 percent. On the same size loan, that can mean a monthly payment increase of hundreds of dollars, sometimes over a thousand. The ripple effect is that owners stay put, there are fewer listings, tighter inventory and slower sales, even where buyer demand exists.

Data helps to tell the story. Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist at First American, and a professional contact I know and respect, reports that roughly 22 percent of outstanding mortgages now carry rates at or above 6 percent. That’s up from about 19 percent a year ago, while the share below 3 percent has slipped to about 20 percent. Since the third quarter of 2025, there have actually been more homeowners locked in above 6 percent than locked in below 3. The freeze is thawing gradually, as life happens. We’re talking job changes, growing families and retirements force some owners to move regardless of their rate.

As Kushi puts it: “The housing market recovery persists, but it’s waiting for a catalyst to accelerate it.”

Why it matters: The lock-in effect is more than a housing story. It involves mobility, including mobility of workers. People won’t move for a better job or a different (smaller, or larger) floor plan when moving means giving up a lower mortgage rate.

It also affects formation and household wealth. All of this helps to explain why today’s affordability squeeze will not go away with a modest interest rate move. The mantra of higher rates for longer appears to be a safe bet for a while.

Reader Q&A

Subscriber Christopher Kerns of Washington, DC, asked us to explain cryptocurrencies.

I asked friend and former colleague Stephen Kates, a certified financial planner (CFP) to weigh in with an explanation as well. You can follow and subscribe to his Substack newsletter titled ADVANCE \ DECLINE here:

ADVANCE \ DECLINE | Managing Money's Ups & Downs

Financial news, insights, and strategy.

By Stephen Kates, CFP®

Crypto is back in the headlines this year, with new spot ETFs, growing institutional adoption, and renewed attention in Washington pulling it back into mainstream conversation, so it’s a good time for a refresher.

Crypto 101: What It Is and If You Need It

Cryptocurrency is a type of digital asset that uses blockchain technology to record transactions without relying on a centralized authority or government. While the technology has sparked excitement about new ways to move money and build financial applications, investing in cryptocurrencies is still very different from investing in stocks or bonds. You should think of the cryptocurrency industry as still being in its early days.

There are legitimate projects with real-world use cases, but there are also countless scams and failed cryptocurrencies. If you’re interested in cryptocurrency because of the technology, it’s worth learning more about blockchain. However, you don’t need to understand every technical detail to understand the investment risks of individual coins and tokens.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two largest and most established cryptocurrencies, but they serve different purposes. Bitcoin is often described as “digital gold” because many investors view it as a scarce store of value that could help diversify a portfolio. Ethereum is a platform that allows developers to build decentralized applications and financial services on its network. The native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network is called ether.

There are also thousands of smaller cryptocurrencies, often called altcoins, or sometimes other less family-friendly names. Creating a new cryptocurrency has never been easier, which is why so many have little practical value. While some altcoins, such as Solana, were created with legitimate use cases, many others were created primarily for entertainment or speculation but have taken on a life of their own (see Dogecoin).

Even with growing acceptance, cryptocurrency remains one of the riskiest investments available. Prices can rise or fall dramatically in a matter of days, driven primarily by investor sentiment or rumors rather than measurable business performance. Unlike stocks, cryptocurrencies generally don’t produce earnings or cash flow that investors can use to estimate their value. Investors also face heightened risks, including hacking, scams, lost passwords, and emotional decision-making fueled by fear of missing out or panic selling.

While the introduction of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs has made investing more accessible through traditional brokerage accounts, the broader cryptocurrency market remains young, volatile, and largely unproven. For those interested in exploring an investment in cryptocurrencies, these ETFs allow investors to gain exposure to cryptocurrency without managing digital wallets or private keys.

So, do you need cryptocurrency in your portfolio?

For most investors, the answer is no. A well-diversified mix of stocks, bonds, and cash can help most people reach their financial goals without ever owning digital assets. For those who understand the risks and want exposure to the potential upside, limiting investment to no more than 1% to 5% can help prevent a speculative investment from having an outsized impact on long-term results.

As with any investment, never invest money you can’t afford to lose. One of the surest ways to build wealth is to avoid significant losses. Protecting your financial future is almost always more important than chasing the next big thing.

Shoppers Tip: Don’t Outsource Cooking When Possible

The easiest way to cut your food budget is often the simplest: pay for less labor. Every step between a raw ingredient and a finished meal, the washing, chopping, seasoning, cooking, and cleanup is somebody’s time. And that time costs money.

The less of that labor you pay for, the more you save.

Think of it as a ladder. Raw chicken breasts cost the least because you supply more of the work or labor yourself. A step up, pre-marinated or oven-ready chicken costs more because someone else did part of that work, adding value. A restaurant meal costs even more still, since the price covers the costs of a cook, a server, rent, overhead and more. Food delivery adds another layer of labor and fees on top of all that.

At my favorite grocery store, Wegmans, you can see the whole array of these choices on the store shelves. They include the raw ingredients, prepared-but-uncooked options, and fully cooked meals, the latter priced a little higher than the former. Since I enjoy cooking and generally have the time, I’d rather invest my own labor than pay for someone else’s. Not all of the time, but pretty often.

I like dining out as much as anyone. But there are trade-offs beyond price. A restaurant kitchen doesn’t tell you how much salt or butter went into your meal. Cooking at home means you control that yourself. (One of my pet peeves is the huge amount of salt that’s added to many prepared foods. You can see it on the labels.)

Inflation numbers reinforce my point. Since January 2020, grocery prices have climbed roughly 29%, while restaurant prices have risen about 33%, on top of a starting price that was already considerably higher than cooking at home. That combination is a big reason so many consumers still feel sticker shock when they eat out.

My takeaway: the more labor you’re willing to supply yourself, whether that means cooking from scratch or simply choosing something raw over something prepared, the more control you have over both your grocery bill and your ingredients. That’s a win-win along with added satisfaction.

Mark On-Air

I joined my friend, veteran financial journalist Chuck Jaffe, for MoneyLife, a terrific and highly recommended podcast. I’m grateful for Chuck’s support and the opportunity to connect with his audience. Aside from myself, he lands some terrific guests.

Here’s how they described our conversation:

“Mark Hamrick, chief economic analyst at The Hamrick Brief, says that the current affordability crisis has the potential to trigger a recession if it gets to where there’s a slowdown in spending that spills over to impact employment levels. That said, Hamrick says current conditions aren’t yet deserving of the label of “economic crisis,” even if it feels that way for some individuals and households, effectively the bottom portion of the K-shaped recovery. Still, Hamrick says the remarkable facet of the U.S. economy is that it has been able to avoid recession for this long.”

Listen here:

https://moneylifeshow.libsyn.com/mark-hamrick-the-hallmarks-of-a-recession-arent-here-yet

Then & Now

July 26, 1775 — Franklin Delivers the Mail

The 1847 five-cent stamp bearing the portrait of Benjamin Franklin, the first postage stamp issued by the United States government. Franklin, who served as the nation's first postmaster general under the Continental Congress, appeared on the denomination tied to standard letter postage of the era.

Two hundred fifty-one years ago this week, the Second Continental Congress established the United States Post Office and named Benjamin Franklin its first Postmaster General. Franklin was known as a printer, the author and publisher of Poor Richard’s Almanack, an annual pamphlet of proverbs, weather predictions and practical wisdom.

Franklin had run mail routes before, as a royal deputy postmaster in the 1750s. He standardized routes, cut delivery times, and pushed riders to travel through the night to speed correspondence between colonies that barely spoke to one another. By the time the Revolution began, the postal system he had built was already carrying the letters, newspapers, and pamphlets that helped the colonies start thinking of themselves a country, as in the United States.

As a kid growing up in Kansas, I collected stamps. I still feel a bit of nostalgia and deep appreciation whenever I go into my local post office. One of my oldest, most valuable stamps features Franklin’s portrait. It is something I treasure. Although a first-class stamp now costs 82 cents, I maintain that’s still a good value in first class postage to move a letter across the country, or even across the city where I live.

Last Word

“The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.”

— Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth” (June 1889), later republished as “The Gospel of Wealth”

Carnegie built one of the great fortunes of the Gilded Age in steel, then spent his final decades trying to give much of it away. He might be best known for the thousands of libraries that bear his name.

He believed a fortune left unspent, hoarded rather than deployed toward the public good, was a moral failure, not an achievement.

A century and a half later, a handful of technology founders, aka “tech bros”, have built fortunes Carnegie could not have imagined, some individually larger than the entire American steel industry was in his lifetime. Carnegie’s argument was about how wealth should be used. A few of today’s founders have signed the Giving Pledge; others have built foundations still finding their footing. The honest call to action Carnegie’s line above leaves for them isn’t whether they can afford to give more. It’s whether they’ve decided to act as urgently as he did. He understood that building the fortune was only half the job.

-Quick favor: if something in this issue resonated, share it with one person who’d find it valuable. No algorithms, no ad spend. This grows entirely through readers like you passing it along. Thank you.

-Have a question? Reply to this email or write to hamrickbrief@gmail.com. I include reader questions in future editions of The Hamrick Brief.

-I use AI to help generate ideas, build drafts, assist with fact-checking, and create visuals. But every fact gets independently verified, every word is rewritten in my own voice, and every judgment call is mine. Any errors are mine too.

-I am a journalist and economic analyst, not an investment adviser. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

The Brief

From time to time, we update the Hamrick American Prosperity Index, or HAPI, my measure of how well work is translating into financial progress for American households. Rather than focusing solely on inflation or unemployment, HAPI combines two measures that matter in everyday life: how many Americans are working and whether their paychecks are keeping up with the cost of living.

The latest reading suggests the economy continues to lose a bit of momentum.

HAPI ticked up to 59.1 in June, a modest rebound from May’s 58.4, the lowest reading of the year so far. The bounce doesn’t erase the broader trend. HAPI fell for three straight months, from 60.6 in January to 58.4 in May, before rebounding in June.

The employment-population ratio held at 59.0 percent in June, reflecting a labor market that continues to provide jobs for most people who want them. At the same time, inflation-adjusted wage growth came in essentially flat for the month, up just 0.1 percent from a year earlier, meaning many households aren’t seeing much improvement in their purchasing power.

That’s an important distinction.

The labor market hasn’t fallen apart. Instead, it’s gradually becoming less rewarding. People are still collecting paychecks, but those paychecks aren’t stretching much further than they were a year ago, and for much of the spring they were losing ground outright: real wage growth ran negative in April and May before June’s small recovery.

The trend is just as important as the latest reading.

Earlier this year, HAPI stood above 60. Since then, it has drifted lower most months, bottoming at 58.4 in May, as hiring has moderated and real wage gains have faded in and out of positive territory. That’s consistent with what we’ve seen in recent employment reports: fewer new jobs, downward revisions to prior months, and a labor market that’s cooling rather than cracking.

Looking beyond this year puts today’s reading into perspective. The strongest HAPI readings have historically occurred when employment was plentiful and wages consistently outpaced inflation, allowing households to build financial momentum. The weakest periods came when either jobs disappeared, inflation overwhelmed pay increases, or both.

Most Americans who want a job can find one, which remains a significant strength. But many are also discovering that simply staying employed doesn’t necessarily mean they’re making meaningful financial progress.

That’s what HAPI is intended to capture. It tells a different story than the Misery Index. Rather than emphasizing inflation and unemployment, HAPI focuses on the interplay between work and purchasing power, offering another lens for judging how the economy is serving American households.

The HAPI Takeaway: Jobs remain available, but June’s small uptick doesn’t change a run of months where the financial payoff from working has become harder to see.

How-To: The Hamrick Brief Mid-Year Financial Checkup

Successful sports teams don’t wait until the season is over to make adjustments. At halftime, they review what worked, what didn’t and where they need to improve before the second half begins.

The same principle applies to our finances.

The budget you built in January probably doesn’t look exactly like the life you’re living today. Prices have changed. Vacations may have cost more than expected. New subscriptions have quietly appeared. Some readers have changed jobs. Others are thinking about making a change.

That’s why I think the middle of the year is an ideal time for a financial checkup. You don’t need to overhaul your finances. But spending 30 minutes reviewing a handful of key areas can reduce stress and put you in a stronger position for the rest of the year.

Start with your spending

Begin by looking at your checking account or credit card statements from the past few months. Rather than focusing on individual purchases, step back and look for patterns.

Ask yourself:

• Where is my money actually going?

• What expenses surprised me?

• Am I paying for convenience more often than I intended?

• Does my spending still reflect my priorities?

This isn’t about guilt. It’s about making sure your money is supporting the life you’re actually living.

Hunt for recurring charges

Few financial tasks offer a better return on your time than reviewing recurring subscriptions. Small monthly charges have a way of accumulating almost unnoticed.

Look for:

• Streaming services

• AI subscriptions

• Fitness memberships

• Cloud storage

• App subscriptions

• Forgotten free trials

If you no longer use the service, consider whether it’s worth keeping. You may discover savings that add up to hundreds of dollars over a year.

Review your emergency fund

Economic uncertainty hasn’t disappeared, and inflation has changed many household budgets.

Take a moment to ask:

• Would my emergency savings still cover several months of expenses?

• Have my monthly costs increased enough that I should increase my target?

An emergency fund isn’t just about dollars. It’s about buying yourself time and options when life throws you an unexpected challenge.

Revisit your investments

Markets move, sometimes dramatically. Without changing your long-term strategy, this is a good opportunity to see whether your portfolio still reflects the level of risk you intended to take.

Consider:

• Has one investment become a much larger share of my portfolio?

• Is my asset allocation still appropriate?

• Would a simple rebalance bring me back to my plan?

Invest in your earning power

For most working Americans, their greatest financial asset isn’t their investment portfolio. It’s their ability to earn an income.

Mid-year is a good time to ask:

• Is my résumé current?

• Does my LinkedIn profile accurately reflect my experience?

• Is there a skill or certification worth pursuing?

• Are there opportunities to increase or diversify my income?

Sometimes the best investment you can make is in yourself.

Increase your savings, even if just a little

Small adjustments often have surprisingly large long-term effects.

Consider:

• Increasing your 401(k) contribution by one percentage point.

• Raising an automatic savings transfer by $25 or $50.

• Adding a little more to a brokerage or college savings account.

Many people find they barely notice the difference in their take-home pay.

Think ahead to the holidays

It may seem early, but the holidays are only about five months away.

Estimate what you’ll spend on gifts, travel and entertaining, divide that amount by the remaining paychecks this year, and begin saving automatically. Your December budget will thank you.

Don’t overlook the paperwork

Spend a few minutes reviewing the financial details that are easy to postpone but important to keep current.

Check:

• Beneficiaries

• Passwords

• Insurance coverage

• Estate planning documents

• HSA or FSA balances

• Charitable giving plans

None of these items takes very long, but each can prevent bigger problems later.

The Bottom Line

The purpose of a mid-year financial checkup is to make sure your financial plan still fits your life.

Good financial decisions aren’t only about making more money. They’re about buying yourself more choices, reducing future stress and avoiding unpleasant surprises. With nearly half the year still ahead, there’s plenty of time to make changes that can pay dividends well beyond December.

Why We Need To Be Cautious About Following Betting Markets: The Odds Aren’t Oracles

I’ve grown increasingly annoyed watching news outlets treat betting market prices as if they were the real odds of an outcome, reported with the same confidence as a poll or a vote count.

A recent example crystallized it for me. After a Maine Senate candidate was accused of sexual assault and dropped out of the race, multiple outlets reported that Democrats’ chances of beating incumbent Susan Collins had climbed to 63 percent, citing Kalshi and Polymarket, up from 48 percent the day the allegations broke and 56 percent a few days before that. Other coverage broke down the odds of several possible replacement nominees to the percentage point. None of it explained what that number actually represents, or why treating it as “the odds” is more complicated than it sounds.

Here’s the distinction that keeps getting lost. A betting market isn’t an oddsmaker calculating a true probability and posting a line, the way a sportsbook does to balance its own risk. It’s a price, set the same way a stock price is set, by whatever traders are willing to pay. Nobody at Kalshi or Polymarket decided Susan Collins had a 37 percent chance of losing. A pool of traders, wagering real money, arrived at that number through trading. That is a meaningfully different thing than a considered forecast, and it inherits the same flaws as any other market price.

Consider what was actually being priced the week the Maine race blew up. Democrats hadn’t chosen a replacement candidate yet; that wouldn’t happen until a party convention. So “Democrats’ chances” was really several layers of uncertainty stacked on each other: who would be nominated, how well that person would poll against Collins, and how a chaotic, fast-moving news story would keep shifting the ground in the meantime. Compressing all of that into a single percentage makes a genuinely complicated situation sound far more precise than it is.

It’s also not obvious that these markets are as accurate as the coverage implies. A Vanderbilt University study of the final five weeks of the 2024 election, covering 2,500 markets and $2.5 billion in trading volume, found Polymarket correct 67 percent of the time, Kalshi 78 percent, and PredictIt 93 percent. The researchers also found real inefficiencies: contracts for outcomes that could not both happen sometimes moved in the same direction, and 58 percent of Polymarket’s national presidential markets showed prices reversing themselves the next day rather than settling. Those inefficiencies actually increased, not decreased, in the final two weeks before the election, when information was most abundant.

Part of the problem is concentration. Polymarket places no cap on individual bets, and in 2024 a single trader put roughly $42 million behind a Republican win across four accounts, at one point holding more than a fifth of all “yes” shares in that market. A well-calibrated market is supposed to produce losers; that’s what a probability means. The more accurate criticism is that a handful of large, aggressive traders can move these markets more than any broad “wisdom of crowds” does, and the price reflects their risk appetite as much as anyone’s honest information.

This isn’t unique to political betting. The Fed funds futures market and the CME FedWatch tool built on top of it work on the same principle. That tool doesn’t survey anyone’s opinion of what the Federal Reserve will do. It reads the prices of futures contracts, bought and sold mostly by banks and investors hedging their own interest rate exposure, and mathematically backs out an implied probability from those prices. When a headline says markets are pricing in an 80 percent chance of a cut, it is describing the same kind of number as “Democrats have a 63 percent chance,” a snapshot of where positioned money sits today, not a forecast of what will happen.

There is also a conflict of interest worth naming. Kalshi recently raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation, the same week it struck deals to put its real-time odds directly into CNN and CNBC broadcasts. Its CEO has said the company’s ambition is to “financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference of opinion.” A platform that profits from trading volume has an obvious incentive for its numbers to look authoritative and newsworthy, regardless of whether they hold up.

The information quality problem runs deeper than conflicts of interest. Axios documented Polymarket falsely attributing a quote to Jeff Bezos, prompting a public denial, and pushing a false claim that Minnesota would lose a congressional seat over deportations, later amplified by the Department of Homeland Security before Polymarket deleted it. Polymarket also claimed Iran’s regime had “lost control” of Tehran during a communications blackout, and Kalshi falsely suggested the U.S. and Denmark were holding “technical talks” to buy Greenland. Both platforms hand out affiliate badges to influencers who’ve spread false or satirical claims under a veneer of credibility. None of this is bound by a newsroom’s editorial standards, yet it reaches audiences the size of real news coverage.

Another concern entirely involves the increasing amount of money people are spending on gambling and other forms of speculation, including betting markets. In an earlier edition, we wrote about the idea that “owning beats hoping, and discipline beats speculation”.

None of this means prediction markets are worthless. Real money changing hands does pull in information that polls alone can miss. But there’s a real difference between a useful signal and “the odds,” and right now, much of the coverage citing these numbers doesn’t explain that difference to readers. The next time a headline cites a prediction market’s odds, it’s worth asking three questions: what exactly is being priced, who’s doing the pricing, and how much reflects concentrated positioning rather than genuine consensus.

Receiving Social Security Benefits? Here’s What’s Expected For the 2027 Cost-Of-Living Increase

We reported in The Brief, Briefly last week that June inflation data came in lower-than-expected. That’s raising questions about what to expect with the looming announcement on a Cost-Of-Living-Adjustment for Social Security recipients.

Social Security recipients are still looking at one of the largest increases in years, but the mild Consumer Price Index report (measuring inflation at the retail level) trimmed estimates for the size of the raise.

The CPI rose 3.5% annually in June, below the 3.8% economists expected and a pullback from May’s three-year high of 4.2%. That cooling flowed straight into COLA math, since the Social Security Administration bases its annual adjustment on CPI-W data collected during the third quarter.

Three independent trackers have now weighed in. AARP is projecting a 3.6% increase for 2027, its first estimate incorporating the June numbers. The Senior Citizens League, which updates its model monthly using inflation, interest rate, and unemployment data, held its estimate at 3.8%, unchanged from June but down from 3.9% in May. And (per CNBC.com) independent analyst Mary Johnson cut her forecast the most sharply, from 4.7% last month to 3.7%, calling it “a significant drop in inflation, and one that we’ve rarely seen in the June CPI data over the past five years.”

That puts most trackers in a 3.6%–3.8% range, still the biggest COLA since 2023. The average retired-worker benefit is $2,071 a month. A 3.6% to 3.8% COLA would translate to roughly $75 to $79 more starting next January.

A larger COLA isn’t necessarily good news. It generally reflects higher inflation retirees have already experienced.

The “jury” isn’t in yet as data unfolds in the coming months. The Social Security Administration calculates the actual COLA using CPI-W data from July, August, and September and won’t announce the official figure until October 14. Two more inflation reports stand between now and then, and either could move the estimate again.

New Federal Government Data on The One Resource We All Spend: Time

If someone handed you a detailed record of how you spent every minute yesterday, what would it reveal about your priorities?

We spend plenty of time thinking about money. How we actually spend our time says just as much about our financial well-being, and perhaps even more about our quality of life.

That’s why the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual American Time Use Survey is one of the most revealing reports the government produces. It isn’t really about economics. It’s about how Americans are actually living.

A few findings jump out at me. Hybrid work is proving durable. More than one-third of employed Americans worked from home for at least part of the day in 2025, even as many employers have pushed workers back to the office. At the same time, full-time workers still averaged just over eight hours on the job on workdays. Flexibility hasn’t necessarily translated into shorter days.

What happens after work may be even more telling.

Americans averaged 5.2 hours a day on leisure activities, with television accounting for about half that time. Meanwhile, we’re spending less time socializing with one another than a decade ago while devoting more time to computers, gaming, and social media. For teenagers, leisure computer use now averages about an hour and a half each day.

I do worry about this. Technology gives us more ways to connect, yet it may also be replacing some of the face-to-face interactions that enrich our lives. I see so many people who seem disconnected from their environment, either unable or unwilling to connect with people who are, effectively, right in front of them.

The survey also reminds us that millions of hours of unpaid work never appear in GDP. Cooking, cleaning, maintaining a home, and caring for children or an older relative all remain essential parts of daily life, and they consume a great deal of time and energy.

We often focus here on jobs, inflation, interest rates, and consumer spending because those forces shape our financial lives.

This report offers a reminder: prosperity isn’t measured only by income or wealth.

The challenge isn’t always simply earning more. It’s making sure we’re investing our time in the people, pursuits, and experiences that generate the greatest, true return.

Homebuying holds less allure in the minds of Americans

For generations, homeownership has been central to the American Dream. But whether Americans believe it’s a good time to buy a home has rarely been more revealing.

Gallup has been asking the question for decades. The latest reading finds that only about one in four Americans say it’s a good time to buy a house, among the lowest readings in the survey’s history.

It’s not hard to understand why.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage has been around 6.5% of late. That’s little changed in recent weeks, but it remains more than double the rock-bottom rates many existing homeowners locked in just a few years ago.

At the same time, the median price of an existing home sold in June reached $440,600. While inventory has improved, affordability remains a formidable hurdle for first-time buyers and many middle-income households.

The American dream of homeownership hasn’t disappeared. For many families, it has simply become harder to afford. Some have postponed buying. Others are adjusting expectations, considering different markets, smaller homes, or waiting for an opportunity that better fits their finances.

Housing remains more than a place to live. It shapes family finances, household wealth, consumer confidence, labor mobility, and ultimately the broader economy.

America is still buying roughly 4.75 million homes a year, including new and existing home sales. But the question isn’t whether people want to own a home. It’s how many Americans believe they can, or can actually afford to buy.

The best time to buy has always been about more than mortgage rates or home prices. It’s whether the math and the budget implications work for your own life.

The Shelf Life Segment

Rice-A-Roni: Why Is This Still Around? Nostalgia and Convenience, That’s Why.

Walk down the rice aisle at almost any supermarket and chances are you’ll still find a familiar red box: Rice-A-Roni. It’s even sold at Target, as my real-world check recently found. At my local favorite grocery store, Wegmans, it is $1.59 for 6.5 ounces. I do have to note that it has a lot of otherworldly ingredients that seem like they came from another planet. And that’s despite the words on the front: “making home made easy”.

It first appeared nationally in 1958, the creation of the DeDomenico family of California. A few years later came one of advertising’s most memorable slogans, “The San Francisco Treat.” Nearly 70 years later, it’s still earning shelf space. Does San Francisco even acknowledge this? I doubt it.

Why has it survived?

Today’s grocery shoppers have more choices than ever. There are microwaveable grains, frozen side dishes, meal kits, organic options, and countless ways to prepare rice from scratch. Many consumers also say they prefer foods with fewer ingredients and less processing.

It remains inexpensive, shelf-stable, quick to prepare, and familiar. On a busy weeknight, convenience often wins. So do habit and even nostalgia. Millions of Americans grew up eating Rice-A-Roni, and many still buy it because they know exactly what they’re getting.

Consumers don’t always shop the way they answer surveys or the way someone else might say they should. While many tell pollsters they’re looking for healthier or less processed foods, the checkout line often reflects a balancing act among nutrition, price, convenience, taste, and time. Those tradeoffs are part of everyday life.

Rice-A-Roni also reminds us that successful products don’t always need constant reinvention. Sometimes they simply continue solving the same problem, decade after decade. In this case, helping put an inexpensive, dependable side dish on the dinner table.

Very few consumer products remain relevant for nearly seven decades. The ones that do usually have something important in common: they continue delivering value that millions of people recognize.

What This Tells Us

Consumers may embrace new products, but they rarely abandon old favorites that continue to save time, fit the budget, and deliver on their promise. I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for nostalgia and reconnecting with memories of the past. In fact, I bought a box of Rice-A-Roni this week just to check it out and reconnect with my memories.

Your turn: Do you still buy Rice-A-Roni or any other product that you love reconnecting you with the past? Better yet, if you spot it or another product on a grocery shelf or in your pantry, snap a photo and share it in the comments.

THEN & NOW July 20, 1903: Ford Builds the Future

Some 123 years ago, on July 20, 1903, the Ford Motor Company shipped its first car, a two-cylinder Model A, ordered by a Chicago dentist named Ernst Pfenning for $850. The company had taken its first order five days earlier. By that point, Henry Ford and his twelve investors had spent nearly every dollar of their $28,000 in starting capital. The car left the plant. The money was almost gone.

Within three months, Ford had turned a $37,000 profit. Within a year, the Mack Avenue plant had produced a thousand cars. Within a generation, the assembly line had transformed not just transportation but the very idea of what American manufacturing could be, who could make things, who could afford them, and what wages a factory job might pay.

One hundred and twenty-three years later, the American auto industry is again at an inflection point: electric vehicles, tariffs on parts and finished cars, factories being retooled or shuttered. The car that shipped on July 20, 1903 launched a century of prosperity and displacement in roughly equal measure. That tension has never been resolved. It is simply being renegotiated.

LAST WORD

“If I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I said.”

- Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman (1987-2006). Greenspan died on June 22, 2026, at age 100.

For nearly two decades, Alan Greenspan presided over the American economy with a mastery of strategic ambiguity and a Ph.D. His elliptical congressional testimony became legend: markets moved, and careers were made parsing his subordinate clauses. He did not obscure things by accident. Deliberate opacity, he believed, was a tool of policy.

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Have a question? Reply to this email or write to hamrickbrief@gmail.com. I include reader questions in future editions of The Hamrick Brief.

I am a journalist and economic analyst, not an investment adviser. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

Tuesday’s CPI showed consumer prices fell 0.4% in June, bringing annual headline inflation down to 3.5% from 4.2%. A day later, the June PPI reinforced the trend. Wholesale prices fell 0.3% last month, and May’s initially reported 1.1% increase was revised down to 0.6%. On an annual basis, wholesale inflation slowed to 5.5% from 6.0% in May.

Energy drove much of the improvement. Wholesale gasoline prices fell 12%, while prices at the pump dropped 9.7% as oil retreated from its earlier spike tied to the Middle East conflict.

That’s encouraging. But it doesn’t mean inflation is behind us.

For consumers, prices remain higher than they were a year ago, including gasoline. And while inflation has cooled, many everyday goods and services continue to become more expensive. That’s the key distinction: lower inflation doesn’t mean lower prices. It means prices are rising more slowly.

For the Federal Reserve, these reports are another sign that inflation is moving in the right direction. Inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target, as it has since 2021. The latest data should give policymakers more confidence that progress has resumed. One month of data doesn’t make a trend, but June data broke the streak of bad news.

Consumers are still waiting for meaningful relief. The latest data suggest we’re moving in the right direction, even if we’re not there yet.

What it means for consumers

Lower inflation is not the same as lower prices. Shelter costs are still up 3.3% from a year ago, and food is up 3.0%, so household budgets continue to carry the weight of accumulated increases even as the monthly pace slows. Gasoline illustrates the gap well: pump prices fell 9.7% in June but remain up 26.7% from a year ago.

According to AAA, gasoline prices are up from a week ago.

Real relief could develop more gradually, as wage growth catches up to the price level. That is different from an unlikely return to yesterday’s prices.

What it means for the Fed

The June data give policymakers more room to hold rates rather than raise them. Futures markets pushed the probability of a July pause (no rate change) above 85% following the reports, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. Still, core PPI running at 5.1% annually against core CPI’s 2.6% suggests some pipeline pressure has not fully cleared. A single month of cooler data is unlikely, on its own, to convince policymakers the very recent price trend is durable.

What it means for investors

Markets read the reports as confirmation that a near-term hike is off the table, not as a signal that cuts are imminent. The open question for investors is the durability of the continued stock market rally: how much of this improvement is energy-driven or reversible if Middle East tensions worsen, versus a genuine broadening of disinflation.

To be continued…

[Source: BLS CPI release, July 14, 2026; BLS PPI release, July 15, 2026; CME FedWatch Tool, July 15, 2026]

The Brief, Briefly is a shorter, faster take for days when the data itself is the news; the full edition of The Hamrick Brief, published every Monday, remains the place for deeper analysis and more.

The Brief: The Four Things

Volatility. Disruption. Innovation. Adaptation.

It sometimes feels as though we’re living through several eras at once.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping work and the economy. Geopolitical tensions are altering trade relationships and supply chains. New technologies arrive faster than many people can absorb them. The pace can feel relentless.

More than 50 years ago, futurist Alvin Toffler warned about something like this in his bestselling book Future Shock. Writing in 1970, he argued that the accelerating pace of change could leave people feeling overwhelmed and disoriented, struggling to adapt to a world that seemed to be moving faster than human beings were designed to handle.

Looking around today, it’s hard not to think he was onto something.

If I had to identify some forces or dynamics shaping the economy, the workplace, and our daily lives now and in the years ahead, I’d narrow them to four: volatility, disruption, innovation, and adaptation.

Volatility surrounds us. Markets swing. Interest rates change. Political and geopolitical developments create new uncertainties. Businesses and households alike are being asked to make decisions in an environment where forecasting feels more difficult than it once did.

Disruption is not a rare event. It has become a recurring feature of our lives. Technologies emerge, industries evolve, and business models that seemed durable only a few years ago suddenly face new challenges. Artificial intelligence is the latest example.

Innovation, meanwhile, continues to create opportunities that would have been difficult to imagine just a generation ago. Entire industries have emerged from technologies that did not exist a few decades earlier. New tools are making it easier for individuals to create, communicate, and build businesses of their own.

That brings us to the fourth force: adaptation.

The evidence increasingly suggests that Americans are already adapting. Millions of new business applications continue to be filed each year. More than 30 million businesses operate without employees beyond the owner. Side hustles, consulting, freelancing, and content creation have become commonplace. Increasingly, many Americans are not simply employees or business owners. They are both.

For generations, the dominant model was relatively straightforward: one employer, one paycheck, one career. Today, a growing number of Americans appear to be rewriting that arrangement, some adding freelance clients to their full-time jobs, launching side ventures, and building income from more than one source. Their economic identity has become more layered. And, for some, more resilient.

Whether driven by opportunity, necessity, or some combination of the two, that shift may tell us something important about the future. In a world defined by volatility, disruption, and innovation, the capacity to adapt may prove to be the most valuable skill of all.

Mark’s Personal File: Going from a lousy credit score to a solid one

I have mixed emotions about sharing this, but my credit score has been very strong for some time as a senior, benefiting from years in the workforce and sound, mindful financial practices, such as paying bills on time.

Stay with me, because this isn’t about humble bragging. Quite the contrary. Please give me a minute to explain my journey, one that started from a very different place.

I share this not because I think the number means I’m smarter or more successful than anyone else. Quite the opposite. It makes me think about how far I’ve come. I’ve made more than my share of mistakes early in my life.

When I was in my 20s, I wasn’t making much money. More importantly, I didn’t have much financial know-how. Personal finance wasn’t something I learned growing up; my parents shared absolutely nothing about money, and I made mistakes with credit cards that I wish I hadn’t.

Low income may explain some of what happened, but it doesn’t excuse overusing credit. Those choices were mine.

By the time my wife Jeannie and I were preparing to get married, I had some credit card debt. It wasn’t crazy, but it was there. She had always been disciplined with money and approached finances with an intentionality that I deeply admired. It was understandably concerning to her, and it became a turning point for me. When we were dating, she was working one full-time job and one part-time job, while outfitting her apartment with furniture and, quite impressive to me at the time, a studio-quality Sony Trinitron stereo television (that was rare at the time), a microwave oven, and lovely furniture. She was building something. I was spending, admittedly, on a low income.

Soon afterward, while working at the Associated Press, I was fortunate that the company had an employee credit union. With a bit of forbearance, they allowed me to finance a car purchase, a 1988 Saab 900 that I absolutely loved. Looking back, that loan was about much more than transportation. It was one of the first building blocks in repairing my credit.

A few years later, we bought our first home, a lovely starter townhouse in Maryland, where our son was initially raised. Then, about a decade later, we purchased the home where we’ve lived since. None of it happened overnight. It happened through years of paying bills on time, living within our means, and generally making good decisions, with two incomes.

When I see that solid score today, I don’t see perfection. I see evidence that people can change. I’m also grateful that life has given me so many opportunities, admittedly amid hard work.

I also see the influence of an extraordinary partner. My wife’s discipline, focus and example made our financial life stronger. Together we built something that neither of us could have built alone.

If someone reading this is carrying credit card debt or feels embarrassed by financial mistakes made years ago, I hope you’ll hear this: your past does not have to dictate your future.

What’s the lesson? The most valuable thing I ever learned about credit wasn’t about intentionally nailing a high score. It was that the habits which improve credit can also improve the quality of one’s life.

Pro tips: Boost Your Credit Score

Pay every bill on time

Payment history is the biggest factor in your credit score, about 35% of a FICO Score. Automate at least the minimum due, and if you fall behind, get current fast. Even one payment 30 days late can hurt your score for years. I make sure the minimum payment button is turned on in my credit card apps to ensure that I don’t miss a payment. Typically, I pay off balances every month, but I understand that’s not always possible for everyone.

Keep credit card balances low

Credit utilization, how much of your available credit you’re using, is the next-biggest factor, at 30%. Stay under 30% of your limit, under 10% if you want to maximize your score. On a $10,000 limit, that’s below $3,000, ideally below $1,000. Paying down your balance before the statement closes (not just the due date) lowers what gets reported.

Don’t apply for more credit than you need

New applications trigger hard inquiries, and opening several accounts at once can temporarily lower your score. Apply only when you need it. If you’re rate-shopping for a mortgage or auto loan, keep applications within a short window. Multiple inquiries for the same loan type are usually scored as one.

Bottom line: good credit isn’t a trick. It’s paying on time, borrowing modestly, and letting your history age.

The Hamrick Brief Dashboard: Where the economy stands

How our personal finances fare depend a lot on the state of the economy. That’s why it matters.

June’s jobs report came in soft: just 57,000 payrolls added, well below expectations, with April and May revised down a combined 74,000. The unemployment rate actually fell to 4.2%, but only because the labor force participation rate dropped to its lowest level since March 2021, not because hiring picked up. Meanwhile, the Fed’s June minutes struck a notably more hawkish tone: officials dropped their easing-bias language, and several floated the case for a hike, not a cut, as inflation reaccelerated to 4.2% in May. (An update is due this week).

Experts do not expect a rate move at the Fed’s July 28-29 meeting.

A softening labor market and an inflation-wary Fed rarely coexist for long without tension. If hiring keeps slowing while fewer Americans even look for work, a falling participation rate can mask real weakness behind a falling unemployment rate. If prices stay hot (and continue to rise as they have) at the same time, the Fed faces a genuine conflict between its two mandates, and for now, price stability (inflation that’s on-target) appears to be winning the argument as a reason for potential action over the other part of the mandate, maximum employment (a solid job market).

The odds of an increase in the Fed’s benchmark interest rate have been rising.

For household budgets, that likely means mortgage rates, credit card APRs, and savings yields all stay elevated.

By the Numbers

Housing: A Sixth of the Economy, Moving in Slow Motion

Start with the size of the thing. Combine housing services and residential investment and you get roughly one-sixth of the entire U.S. economy. A slowdown here doesn’t just hit real estate agents and mortgage lenders. It ripples through furniture makers, appliance retailers, contractors and moving companies, an enormous ecosystem riding on one market.

That’s why June’s existing-home sales number matters beyond the headline. As cited above, sales fell 2.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million, one of the weakest June readings in roughly 15 years outside the pandemic shutdown. A decade ago, annual sales north of 5 million were unremarkable.

The second number tells a different story. The national median existing-home price hit a record $440,600, but that’s only 1.8 percent above a year ago, slower than overall inflation. Prices are still climbing. They’ve stopped sprinting.

Here’s what that combination means depending on where you sit. Buyers have gained a little room, since wage growth has generally outpaced home-price growth and competition has eased. Sellers still hold the leverage that comes with thin inventory, but pricing a home accurately now matters more than it has in years. Current homeowners keep building equity, just at a pace that looks sustainable rather than explosive.

The number that ties it together is the one the Federal Reserve watches. Shelter has long been one of the stickiest pieces of the inflation puzzle, and it’s finally cooling alongside home prices, easing one of the central bank’s biggest headaches. None of that changes the underlying problem. The country doesn’t have enough homes. More supply, not falling prices, is still the fix.

Then & Now: A Theme Park That Changed Everything

July 17, 1955

Some 71 years ago this week, Walt Disney opened a theme park in Anaheim, California, on 160 acres of former orange groves. He had borrowed heavily to build it, and friends told him he was making a catastrophic mistake. The park cost $17 million, roughly $200 million in today’s dollars. ABC televised the opening live. The 90-minute special, hosted by a young Ronald Reagan alongside Art Linkletter and Bob Cummings, drew an estimated 90 million viewers, one of the largest live television audiences to that point. Ironically, Disney would go on to buy that same network, paying $19 billion for Capital Cities/ABC in 1996.

By month’s end, Disneyland was averaging more than 20,000 visitors a day. It welcomed 3.6 million people in its first year. What had looked like a disaster turned out to be the seed of an entertainment empire that would go on to acquire Pixar (2006), Marvel (2009), Lucasfilm (2012), and 21st Century Fox (2019), and launch the Disney+ streaming service in 2019.

Disneyland Park alone drew roughly 17.4 million visitors in 2024, and Disney estimates the resort now generates $5.7 billion a year in regional economic impact. But the larger legacy is the concept Walt Disney invented: the immersive experience. Americans now spend more on experiences than on goods, and that has reshaped retail, travel, hospitality, and entertainment over the past generation.

Walt Disney didn’t invent the amusement park. He invented the idea that a place could tell a story you never wanted to leave. That turned out to be worth a great deal more than a roller coaster.

In this era defined by volatility, disruption, and relentless change, his inspiring and remarkable story is a useful reminder. Ingenious and inspired adaptation, executed with conviction, can look a lot like a historic pivot in hindsight.

Last Word

“The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.”

— Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (1970)

The aforementioned Toffler wrote those words more than half a century ago, about a world that still had rotary phones and carbon paper. If anything, the pace of change since then has proved him more right than he could have imagined. My own concern, and I think the concerns of others, have only deepened as technology has become more ubiquitous in our daily lives and society.

The four forces at the center of this week’s Brief -- volatility, disruption, innovation, and adaptation -- all converge on the same conclusion: knowing how to learn may be the most valuable economic skill of all.

Quick favor: if something in this issue resonated, please share it with one person who might find it useful. This grows entirely through readers like you passing it along. Thank you.

Have a question? Reply to this email or write to hamrickbrief@gmail.com. I include reader questions in future editions of The Hamrick Brief.

Note: I’m a journalist, not a financial advisor. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

The Brief: The June Jobs Report

Hiring slowed in June, with employers adding just 57,000 jobs and April and May payroll gains revised down by a combined 74,000, confirming that the stronger hiring seen from March through May was the exception, not a new trend. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.2 percent, a reading that looks steadier than it is.

Underneath, growth stayed narrow or highly concentrated. That’s the opposite of a rising tide lifting all boats. Health care and social assistance drove nearly all private sector hiring. Leisure and hospitality lost 61,000 jobs. Manufacturing eked out a modest gain, breaking a losing streak but not yet signaling a turnaround. When most of the gains come from one or two sectors, the topline number can hide real unevenness across industries and households.

That unevenness is also why 57,000 jobs, disappointing at first glance, is roughly what economists believe is needed to hold the unemployment rate steady right now. Labor supply and demand have both cooled, a different story than a market in distress.

The Federal Reserve meets in late July with inflation, still running above its 2 percent target, as the dominant concern. A labor market that looks adequate on the surface, with real crosscurrents below, gives policymakers little clear signal to move quickly on rates in either direction. Right now, some of the betting is on an interest rate hike. At issue is whether inflation moderates amid lower oil and gasoline prices.

The Personal File: Forty Years Between Terminals and Newsletters My Journey As Journalism and Media Have Evolved

In July 1986, I packed up a humble Ford EXP and drove from Buffalo, New York, to Dallas to begin my career with The Associated Press.

The little two-seater had no air conditioning, ok for Buffalo and horrible for Texas. It wasn’t perfectly built for crossing the country in the middle of summer. But I was 25 years old, excited, and headed toward what I believed was one of the finest journalism organizations in the world.

It turned out to be one of the most important journeys of my life.

This summer marks 40 years since I joined the AP.

When I arrived in Dallas, the newsroom looked very different from anything a young journalist would encounter today. We worked on terminals connected to mainframe computers. News moved across dedicated networks. Newspapers were still the backbone of the news business and, in many ways, of civic life. The AP’s report flowed daily into thousands of newspapers, radio stations, and television stations across the country and around the world.

Some of the technology that seemed sophisticated can now be seen in museums. And yet, the mission is largely the same.

The tools have evolved, but the skills are much the same. Distribution systems have changed. And so have the business models. The ways people discover, consume, and share information have changed. That’s a mixed blessing.

When I started, there was no internet as we know it today. No smartphones, although cellular technology was beginning to appear. There was no social media.

Today, I usually write The Hamrick Brief from my home office and studio and distribute it to readers who can access it on a phone, tablet, or laptop. If someone had described that reality to me in 1986, I would have struggled to imagine it. In fact, I probably would have disputed it.

The news business has been transformed along the way. Newspapers no longer occupy the central position they once held. Radio and television remain influential, but audiences have fragmented across countless platforms. Independent creators now compete for attention alongside some of the world’s largest media organizations.

Barriers to entry, once defined by printing presses and broadcast transmission towers, have largely been erased or marginalized. Competition has multiplied. And audiences (all of us) have more choices than ever before.

Not all of those changes have been positive. Many local news organizations have disappeared or been weakened. Trust has become harder to earn and easier to lose. The economic foundations that supported generations of journalism have been disrupted.

At the same time, remarkable opportunities have emerged.

A journalist no longer needs much to reach an audience. Increasingly, the relationship is direct. Inboxes, websites and applications have become destinations. Readers choose whom they trust and invite into their lives.

I don’t know exactly where all of this leads. But I do know that I have been quite fortunate.

I was fortunate to begin my career at a small radio station in Coffeyville, Kansas, as a teenager, learning by doing and making plenty of mistakes. It was good fortune to spend 26 years with The Associated Press and more than a decade with Bankrate. And now, I’m excited to build something new through The Hamrick Brief, and you are part of it!

Looking back, I can still picture that drive to Dallas in the summer of 1986 with no AC in the humble Ford EXP. The road ahead seemed long and uncertain. And, my current vehicle, an electric vehicle, has terrific heating and cooling.

I’m also grateful that, all these years later, we’ve embarked on a new adventure.

Related reading

The Creator Economy Has a New King: my earlier look at how audience and dollars are shifting from legacy media to independent creators.

The new kings of the news business are in your inbox: Scott Nover’s Washington Post report on journalists and independent creators building sustainable media businesses, one newsletter at a time.

What To Know From A Closely-Watched Housing Market Report: Where You Can Afford to Live

The housing debate usually gets reported as a remote, market story. Sales up, prices down, rates one way or the other. The question underneath it is more personal. Can you afford to live where your life actually is?

The annual State of the Nation’s Housing report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, released recently, is the closest thing we have to an answer. This year it describes a market that is neither booming nor busting. It is stuck. Demand has softened, but prices have not followed, because the country is still short of homes, especially at the prices most people can actually pay. New building has cooled rather than surged. Single-family housing starts fell about 7 percent over the past year, so supply is not catching up quickly.

Who the market is sidelining

The sharpest signal this year is not about prices. It is about people who cannot move forward. Household growth slowed for the third straight year in 2025, as weaker hiring, student debt, and plain uncertainty made it harder for young adults to form their own households. Many are staying with parents or doubling up with roommates. Residential mobility has fallen to a record low, and the homeownership rate slipped for a second consecutive year.

If you are trying to buy

The obstacle is no longer aspiration. It is the math. Existing-home sales remain near a 30-year low, and the homes that do come to market increasingly are not the affordable ones. The number of listings a household earning $75,000 or less could afford this spring was down about 60 percent from 2019, by the report’s reading of National Association of Realtors data. Mortgage rates have eased from their recent highs but remain elevated. Freddie Mac put the average 30-year fixed near 6.5 percent in late June, and most forecasts expect it to hold close to that through year-end. By longer historical standards that is not high. The 30-year fixed carries a median north of 7 percent over the half century Freddie Mac has tracked it. But it sits well above the sub-4 percent rates a generation of recent buyers came to expect.

If you already own

The report is a reminder that the cost of staying put keeps climbing even when the mortgage does not. Most existing owners hold loans locked in below 4 percent, a real cushion. But property taxes, homeowners insurance, and maintenance rarely hold still, and all three have been rising. A fixed monthly payment is not a fixed cost of ownership.

If you rent

There is finally a little relief on rents. Higher vacancies pushed rents down nationally for the first time since 2021. But affordability remains the exception. A record 22.7 million renter households, nearly half of all renters, now spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, and 12.1 million spend more than half.

What to do now

If you are buying, patience and preparation are still the right approach, but waiting for dramatically lower rates is not a sound plan. With forecasters expecting the 30-year fixed to hover near 6.5 percent through year-end, the moves that matter are the ones within your control. Strengthen your credit. Pay down other debt. Build the down payment. And watch your target market, which may look nothing like the national averages. Prices are still rising across much of the Midwest and Northeast even as parts of the Sun Belt and West soften.

For renters, easing rents may open a little room, but affordability is still a stretch in many communities. Flexibility and a financial cushion remain the priorities.

Owning a home has long stood at the center of the American Dream. For many households today, the obstacle is not a lack of aspiration. It is affordability, and a supply that has not kept pace. Those problems were years in the making and will not be solved quickly. But knowing where you actually stand, as a buyer, an owner, or a renter, is the first step toward making the math work for the life you are actually living.

Personal Finance Advice From Award-Winning Expert Michelle Singletary

Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary’s grandmother didn’t have a financial planner. She had a philosophy that has now resonated for years.

Michelle Singletary grew up in Baltimore, raised by her grandmother, whom she calls Big Mama. Her grandmother raised six children on a limited income, never owned a credit card, and died without debt. She also died with something rarer than wealth: peace about money.

Michelle went on to become one of the most widely read personal finance columnists in the country. Her highly-awarded column, The Color of Money, has run in The Washington Post for more than a quarter century. The color of money, she’ll tell you, is green. Financial pressure doesn’t sort itself neatly by race or zip code. It finds everyone eventually.

During the pandemic, I had the chance to interview Michelle on camera. She is as authentic as it gets, living the life that she’s advocated over many years.

She thinks about Big Mama when she writes: “Would she understand this? Would she find it useful?”

Two principles I carry from that conversation:

Spend less than you earn. It sounds obvious. It isn’t. Every time income rises, the temptation is to let spending rise with it. The people who build genuine financial security tend to resist that pull. A raise is not permission to upgrade everything. It’s an opportunity to strengthen the foundation.

Keep two emergency funds. The standard advice is three to six months of expenses. Michelle goes further: a second, smaller “Life Happens Fund” for ordinary disruptions -- the car repair, the appliance that breaks, the unexpected travel. Without that second bucket, people raid the main fund for things that aren’t really emergencies, and have nothing left when the real ones arrive.

She showed me what that preparation looks like in practice. When her daughter suffered a collapsed lung, Michelle and her husband were able to buy last-minute plane tickets to Houston and stay as long as necessary. No negotiation about the cost. No panic. Because they had saved for exactly this kind of moment, the financial dimension of a terrifying family emergency essentially disappeared. They could focus entirely on their daughter.

That is what financial preparation actually buys. Not just security. Your full attention when it matters most.

Watch our conversation here: On The Money with Michelle Singletary

Then & Now

July 4, 1776 -- and What the Founders Actually Owed

With the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is worth remembering that several of the men who signed it were in significant debt at the time they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Thomas Jefferson owed roughly the equivalent of more than a million dollars in today’s money at his death. Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution and one of the signers, died having spent time in a debtors’ prison. The ideals of the Founding were real and remarkable. The financial lives of the founders were, in many cases, complicated cautionary tales.

I wrote last week about the differences in celebrating the nation’s 200^th and 250^th anniversaries.

In case you missed the previous edition, see The Personal File: Remembering the Bicentennial in 1976 and How Things Have Changed

Mark, Actually

The Claim: “Debt is always bad. Pay it all off as fast as possible.”

Actually: Not all debt is equal. The question is always: what does the debt cost, and what does it make possible?

Not all debt was created equal. Neither are its costs. Think of it as a kind of spectrum. A 30-year mortgage, even at today’s levels, at a reasonable rate is a tool for building equity and stability. A lower-interest student loan that funds training for a high-earning career may be worth the cost. The question isn’t whether debt exists. It’s whether the interest rate is manageable, whether the asset or outcome is worth the cost, and whether the payment fits within a budget that still allows for saving and an emergency fund.

Don’t borrow for depreciating assets at high rates (RV owners, I’m talking to you), and don’t let debt crowd out the cushion that protects you when life gets hard.

Why It Matters: Blanket rules about debt, such as that it is always bad or that we should always eliminate it immediately, can lead people to drain their emergency savings to pay down a low-rate loan, leaving nothing for the next crisis. Context matters. The interest rate also matters. Ultimately, the trade-offs matter, too.

Last Word

“Financial freedom is when you have power over your fears and anxieties instead of the other way around.”-- Suze Orman, The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (1997)

Suze Orman wrote this advice nearly three decades ago for the opening of the book that became the first of her ten consecutive New York Times bestsellers. She learned some lessons about money the hard way. Before Merrill Lynch, Prudential Bache, her own firm, and thirteen years hosting on CNBC, she waited tables at a Berkeley bakery for about $400 a month and lost a $50,000 stake to a broker who put it in the wrong investments. Her definition of financial freedom has stayed the same since: it is not how much you have, but whether your worries control you.

Before closing, I have a quick, painless favor to ask: if something in this issue resonated with you, please share it with one person who’d find it valuable. No algorithms, no ad spend. This grows entirely through readers like you passing it along. We’re extremely grateful that some readers have become paid subscribers as well! Thank you, all!

Have a question? Reply to this email or write to hamrickusa@gmail.com. I include reader questions in future editions of The Hamrick Brief.

Note: I’m a journalist, not a financial advisor. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

The economic numbers we track are measures of scale. GDP. Payrolls. The S&P 500 stock index. The inflation rate. Like the economy’s equivalent of the complicated cross currents of the ocean, they tell us about different dynamics which, taken together, are difficult to fully fathom and process.

A new study from Gallup and Edward Jones asked something different from what we often measure: How fulfilled do Americans feel about their financial lives? Only 16 percent qualify as financially fulfilled. More than half are somewhere in between: not in crisis, but not at ease either. Carrying on, but carrying worry.

This week, we look at what that finding actually means and why it may explain more about the American mood than any headline economic statistic.

The Brief

Money and (Lack of) Meaning

What a new study reveals about financial fulfillment — and why the numbers in your accounts aren’t the whole story.

Over the course of my career, I’ve worked to translate economic data into human terms. The idea is to connect the dots between widely-reported data and terms that are meaningful to everyday Americans.

For example, the nation’s unemployment rate, recently at 4.3 percent, is not some abstraction, even though it is often treated that way; there’s a person who lost a job and doesn’t know how to tell their family. Inflation measures are not just statistics; they’re exemplified by the moment at the grocery store when you put something back. I’ve been there, and I imagine you have been too.

A new study from Gallup and Edward Jones provides a useful framework for a question I’ve been pondering for some time: Why do so many Americans report feeling financially anxious even when employment is high, spending is holding up, and markets have recovered?

The answer, this research suggests, is that we’ve been measuring the wrong thing.

The Three Groups

This study surveyed more than 5,000 Americans and sorted them into three groups. Sixteen percent are financially fulfilled. Thirty-two percent are financially stressed. And 51 percent, the majority, fall into a middle category the researchers call financially conflicted.

That middle group is the real story.

Conflicted Americans are not in freefall. They are paying their bills, holding their jobs, perhaps saving for retirement. But they are also one unexpected event away from a financial setback. They worry that the plan, such as it is, could be disrupted by a car repair, a medical bill, a layoff, or any of the hundred things that life can throw at a household in a given year.

What Fulfillment Actually Means

The study finds that financial fulfillment isn’t primarily about income or wealth. It is defined by four factors: whether your finances align with your values and goals; whether your financial situation produces positive emotions rather than dread; whether you feel financially confident; and whether your money supports the life you are trying to build.

In other words, fulfillment is less about a number and more about a feeling of control.

One participant in the study who was considered financially fulfilled put it plainly. Prosperity, for him, wasn’t about luxury. It was knowing that if he lost his job tomorrow, he could continue paying his mortgage for several months. That may be the most honest definition of financial security I have come across in more than three decades of covering economics and personal finance.

What follows from this is striking. Among financially fulfilled Americans, 83 percent describe themselves as thriving in life overall. Among the conflicted group, that figure falls to 52 percent. Among the stressed, it drops to 18 percent. Gallup says these relationships hold even after controlling for age, income, net worth, and creditworthiness. The missing ingredient isn’t simply more money. It’s confidence. It’s a plan.

The Confidence Gap

This also helps explain something I’ve noticed in consumer surveys for years. Americans persistently tell pollsters they are unhappy about the economy, even when, by conventional measures, things look reasonably solid. The reason may be that people don’t measure their lives by GDP or the S&P 500. They measure them by whether they feel in control of their own situation. And for the 51 percent in the conflicted middle, the honest answer is: not entirely.

One note of transparency: this study was commissioned by Edward Jones, which has a natural interest in demonstrating the value of financial planning and professional advisors. Not surprisingly, the report finds that fulfilled Americans are more likely to have worked with financial advisors. Correlation isn’t causation. It may be that people who feel more financially secure are also more likely to seek professional help, rather than the reverse. I mention this not to dismiss the findings, which align well with decades of research on financial stress and well-being, but because I think you deserve more context.

What the research ultimately says is something I believe to be true from long experience: financial well-being is not just about accumulation. It’s about alignment — between what you earn, what you spend, what you owe, and what you’re working toward. When those things are in sync, the number in the account matters less than you might think. When they’re not, no number feels like enough.

Action items: If money fails to cure all that ails us, what is the prescription?

This study doesn’t leave you with only a diagnosis. The path from conflicted to fulfilled tends to run through a few concrete moves. Notably, none of them require a higher income.

Know your floor, not your ceiling. The fulfilled aren’t optimizing for maximum wealth. They start with a simpler question: how many months of essential expenses could I cover if something went wrong? Even one month changes how you feel when you check your balance. Two months changes your behavior.

Name your money before it names you. Fulfilled Americans were more likely to have spending that reflected conscious choices rather than accumulated drift. This isn’t about rigid budgets. It’s about asking, before the money goes somewhere, whether that’s where you actually want it to go.

Schedule a financial check-in — brief, regular, boring. Financial anxiety tends to grow in the silence between looking at your accounts. A ten-minute weekly review — spending vs. plan, savings vs. goal — gives worry a place to land. Left unexamined, financial stress becomes ambient. Given a structure, it becomes manageable.

The research on this is consistent with what we know about mental health more broadly: uncertainty is harder to carry than bad news. Most financial anxiety isn’t about the numbers being wrong. It’s about not knowing what the numbers actually are.

Mark’s Personal File: When enthusiasm over technology gets out of control

Second Life drew universities, banks, broadcasters, and even a national embassy. Then the campuses emptied, and the avatars logged off for good. The pattern is worth remembering every time everybody starts climbing aboard the next sure thing.

I remember spending time in the virtual world Second Life in a public library when our son needed a quiet place to study. He had his books. I had a laptop and time to kill, steering a digital version of myself through a pixelated world that many serious people were calling the future. I remember being curious. I also remember thinking it was slow, awkward, and not terribly useful for anything I actually needed to do. That instinct turned out to be worth more than most of the venture capital that poured in after me.

Second Life launched on June 23, 2003, out of San Francisco’s Linden Lab, and for a stretch, it looked unstoppable. By 2013, it had roughly a million regular users. In 2008, Linden Lab claimed more than 300 universities were teaching or doing research within it. This was not a fringe enthusiasm, and the names that joined were ones you would recognize. IBM reportedly spent millions on a presence. Reuters opened a news bureau with a real reporter filing from inside. Wells Fargo built a financial-literacy game. Adidas, Reebok, and American Apparel set up shop. Sweden opened a virtual embassy in 2007.

Then the gold rush ran out of gold. The tell was visible early: lots of presence, very little purpose. Companies built islands because competitors built islands, and visitors showed up once and never returned. Linden Lab’s VR successor, Sansar, drew so little uptake it was shelved in 2020. The campuses became genuine ghost towns, pristine and empty, one of them featuring a pirate ship where avatars could learn about test anxiety. The lights were on. Nobody was home.

The lesson outlasted the platform: popularity, and a crowd of loud cheerleaders, does not mean the underlying idea is sustainable.

Another great flame-out: NFTs

NFTs ran the same movie with a new cast. Art NFT trading volume hit $2.9 billion in 2021, the year Beeple’s “Everydays” sold for $69.3 million. By the first quarter of 2025 it had collapsed to $23.8 million, down roughly 93 percent, per the market-data firm DappRadar. Active traders fell from a 2022 peak near 529,000 to about 19,600. By multiple industry estimates, more than 95 percent of NFT collections ever created are now effectively worthless. A CryptoPunk can still fetch seven figures, but a luxury item at auction does not mean the shop down the street has customers, and most of the shops have closed.

Then there is the most expensive cautionary tale. Facebook renamed itself Meta in October 2021 to chase an immersive virtual world. Reality Labs has since lost about $83.6 billion through the end of 2025, including $19.19 billion last year alone, on the company’s own numbers. The flagship, Horizon Worlds, peaked near 300,000 monthly users in early 2022 and fell below 200,000 by that October. In March 2026, Meta effectively pulled its VR metaverse off the headset and redirected the money to artificial intelligence. The company is still named Meta. The metaverse it was named for is gone.

What about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

Cryptocurrency is where the pattern stops being clean, and the caution has to be more honest. Bitcoin did not go to oblivion. It hit an all-time high of $126,272 in October 2025, and more than $130 billion now sits in regulated spot ETFs. That is a real structural change, not a press release. But this June, more than $2 billion flowed back out of those funds in a couple of weeks, and the price retreated hard. Bitcoin produces no earnings and no cash flow. Its value rests on scarcity, adoption, and confidence, which is to say on sentiment, the same thing that emptied the Second Life campuses. An asset can be genuinely adopted and still carry real risk for whoever buys at the top with money they cannot lose.

To be honest with you, I don’t see the use case or a good reason for being, for cryptocurrencies for most Americans. Certainly not for me.

The thread through all of this is exposure, financial and reputational, both. The warning is not to avoid new technology. It is to separate adoption from utility, and enthusiasm from exposure, and to ask the boring questions before committing serious money. Who actually uses this, and for what? Would they keep using it if the hype went quiet tomorrow? What do I lose if I am wrong, and can I survive it? The campuses are still standing inside Second Life, lights on, quads empty, waiting for a crowd that left long ago. But the money used to invest in it will never be recovered.

It’s worth picturing the next time everyone around you is climbing aboard and wondering why you are still on the platform, checking the schedule, refusing to get out over your skis.

ICYMI: Remembering Alan Greenspan, the Maestro, 1926–2026

Alan Greenspan, who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve for more than 18 years and became the most influential economic policymaker of his era, died recently at his Washington home. He was 100. His wife, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, confirmed the death was caused by complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Greenspan served under four presidents — Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush — the second-longest tenure in Fed history. He became known as “the Maestro.” He guided the economy through the 1987 stock market crash, the long boom of the 1990s, the Asian financial crisis, the dot-com bust, and the aftermath of September 11. For a generation, he was the most consequential economic voice in the world.

Obfuscation: His Unforgettable – And Confounding -- Way with Words

Greenspan’s communication style was, in its own way, one of the most distinctive parts of his legacy. Most of the time, his goal seemed to be to say as little as possible, wrapped in language so layered it resisted interpretation. He captured his own approach perfectly before a congressional hearing: “If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.”

Which makes what happened in December 1996 all the more remarkable. He uttered two words that became part of the economic lexicon: “irrational exuberance.” It was a warning that investors might be pushing asset prices beyond what fundamentals could justify. The dot-com bubble would run for several more years before imploding. Few phrases from a central banker survive for decades. That one did.

The Contradiction

Greenspan’s legacy will always carry a contradiction. He warned about excess in the stock market and was ultimately proven right. But when housing prices surged in the early 2000s, he saw mostly localized “froth”, not the broader risks building beneath the surface. After the housing bust and the Great Financial Crisis, critics argued that his faith in markets and resistance to stronger regulation contributed to what made the collapse possible. Greenspan himself later acknowledged the flaw in that worldview, a rare admission for a policymaker of his stature.

A Personal Note

I covered Federal Reserve news conferences from their beginning in 2011, starting with Greenspan’s successor Ben Bernanke. Greenspan had left the post by then, but his shadow remained. He had established the modern Fed chair as one of the most closely watched figures in American life, someone whose word choices, pauses, and even briefcase appearance were parsed for signals about what might come next. The Fed we know today was shaped in important ways by his nearly two decades in that chair.

What His Time Means Now, in Retrospect

Greenspan presided over what became known as the Great Moderation, a remarkably long stretch of relatively steady growth, low inflation, and fewer severe recessions. Fast forward to the present: Inflation is back above 4 percent. The Fed under Kevin Warsh is signaling possible rate hikes, not cuts.

Something is fitting about the timing. Warsh, who has ties to Greenspan’s era, appears to be trying to put the transparency and forward guidance “genie” back in the bottle, moving away from the explicit signals about future decisions that characterized the Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell years, and back toward something closer to Greenspan’s deliberate opacity. Whether that approach reduces the Fed’s influence over markets or simply adds volatility remains to be seen, especially with five internal task forces now reviewing Fed operations and the potential for significant institutional change. Greenspan’s career is a reminder that policymakers operate with incomplete information. The Fed under any chair is always making consequential decisions amid uncertainty. He opted to avoid saying that, as well.

A Footnote: Behind the scenes, who actually came up with “irrational exuberance”?

The celebrated phrase’s origin is an interesting story. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller, whom I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing on several occasions, briefed Greenspan at a Fed lunch days before the speech, describing the market’s run-up as what might be called “irrational exuberance.” Whether Greenspan borrowed it from that conversation, or independently landed on it in the bathtub while drafting his remarks, as he later claimed, remains genuinely disputed. What isn’t disputed is that Shiller’s landmark book by the same name came four years later, in 2000, named after Greenspan’s phrase rather than the other way around. History handed Greenspan the credit. Shiller got the Nobel. Seems like a draw.

THEN & NOW: A Declaration of Independence

The Pursuit of Happiness, 250 Years Later

Two hundred fifty years ago this week, Thomas Jefferson made a quiet but consequential choice. John Locke, whose ideas shaped the founders’ thinking, had written of life, liberty, and property. George Mason’s Virginia Declaration, drafted three weeks earlier, kept property in the triad. Jefferson, drafting in a rented Philadelphia room, left it out — and put happiness, not wealth, as the thing the new nation would protect the right to pursue.

A quarter millennium later, the country is richer than anything the founders could have imagined. Only 16 percent of Americans say they feel financially fulfilled. Jefferson never promised happiness. He promised the right to pursue it, and left the rest to us.

John Adams, writing to Abigail on July 3, 1776, predicted the day would be remembered with “Pomp and Parade… Bonfires and Illuminations.” He was off by two days. What neither he nor Jefferson could know was whether the country they were declaring would survive long enough to celebrate anything. The signers who pledged “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” were risking real property and livelihoods, not merely signing a document. Hard currency was scarce. Credit ran on personal reputation. Their uncertainty was not so different from ours. The tools have changed, from barns and fields to screens and retirement accounts. The thread connecting their lives to ours is the same: a bet on a future that cannot be fully seen. It was then. It still is.

The Personal File: Remembering the Bicentennial in 1976 and How Things Have Changed

I still have my American Bicentennial glass mug. I bought it in the summer of 1976, the year the country turned 200, when my family loaded up the car in Kansas and headed east. We were not a family that took fancy vacations. But in the Bicentennial season, we traveled to way to Colonial Williamsburg, and Jefferson’s Monticello in Virginia and then Washington, DC. Between the time and distances, it was an arduous haul.

The mug shows an idealized colonial tavern, founder-looking men hoisting tankards, the kind of scene that helps celebrate an idealized notion of the revolution and the nation’s founding.

What I remember most is the vastly different mood 50 years ago. The bicentennial was everywhere -- on the radio, on television, in the way ordinary people talked to each other. The country was throwing a party, and for a stretch, we all seemed to be invited.

Fast forward fifty years. The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence arrives this summer, and the data describe a much quieter house.

Fewer say they’re proud to be American

Start with pride. The Public Religion Research Institute, in a survey conducted May 1 to 18, 2026, found that 51 percent of Americans say they are extremely or very proud to be American. In 2013, that figure was 82 percent. A drop of more than thirty points in roughly a decade is not a mood swing. It is a shift in the foundation.

Gallup, which has asked the question since 2001, tells the same story across a longer arc. Its most recent reading, from June 2025, put the combined extremely-or-very-proud share at 58 percent, a record low at the time and down nine points in a single year. The party split is stark: Republicans at 92 percent, Democrats at 36 percent, and independents at 53 percent. There’s a generational cliff underneath all of it. Averaged across 2021 to 2025, just 41 percent of Generation Z called themselves extremely or very proud, against 75 percent of baby boomers and 83 percent of the Silent Generation.

Worry about the economy and political division

The sourness is not confined to the flag. Pew Research Center, surveying April 6 to 12, 2026, found a public bracing for decline: majorities expect the economy to weaken, the country to grow more divided, and the United States to matter less in the world by 2050. An earlier Pew reading from late January found 69 percent dissatisfied with the country’s direction and just 29 percent satisfied. An NBC News survey fielded in late May and early June found most Americans now believe the nation’s best years are behind it.

You may wonder whether there is comparable data from 1976. There is not, at least not in this form. Gallup did not begin asking how proud people are to be American until 2001, so there is no clean number to set beside the mug. But we do not need one. Anyone who lived through that summer remembers a shared enthusiasm that today’s figures simply do not describe.

Here is what troubles me, and it is not the headline number. When Pew asked Americans what makes them proud of their country, the most common answer, by a wide margin, was freedom. The founding ideas still resonate. What has frayed is the willingness to hold those ideas in common, above party. Too many of us now place the team ahead of the principles the team is supposed to serve. The tankards in that tavern scene are raised together. That was always the point.

The 250th anniversary is a milestone worth celebrating. Whether it amounts to much of a celebration is a question we answer with actions and attitude, including how we treat the people with whom we might have a difference of opinion. The mug is still on the shelf, still embodying our core values. Two and a half centuries later, we are still working through the American Experiment.

Mark, Actually: Setting the Record Straight

The Claim: “If you just earn more money, your financial stress will go away.”

Actually: Income helps, but it rarely solves the underlying problem.

The research we cover this week makes a strong case for this. Financial fulfillment tracks more closely with control, confidence, and alignment than with raw income. High earners routinely report financial stress. People with modest incomes who spend within their means, maintain an emergency fund, and have a clear sense of their financial goals often describe themselves as fulfilled.

There’s a name for the phenomenon of spending rising to meet income: lifestyle inflation. Better yet: lifestyle creep. Each raise brings a larger apartment, a newer car, and a more expensive vacation. The monthly burden grows. The cushion doesn’t. Income has risen. Anxiety has not fallen.

Why It Matters: This doesn’t mean income is irrelevant. Below a certain level, financial stress is simply the math. But above that floor, the research consistently finds that habits and structure matter more than the size of the paycheck. The question isn’t only how much comes in. It’s what happens to it after it does. I keep coming back to a favorite money management mantra: Live beneath your means.

Another line also comes to mind: Fannie Hurst, the American novelist, famously remarked, “Money can’t buy happiness, but it makes misery a whole lot more comfortable.”

Mark On-Air

This past week, NewsNation asked me to join live to discuss the state of the economy amid our contentious political environment. My goal is to be fair and stick to the facts.

Check out the interview here:

Last Word

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.”

— Will Rogers, American humorist and social commentator, 1879–1935

I love this quotation’s spin on some common-sense financial advice, I think, is at the core of avoiding mistakes and capitalizing on opportunity. The phrase I use is to “live beneath your means.” Rogers couldn’t have possibly imagined how these all-too-human urges would be taken to the next level in the age of social media and reality television.

Rogers, who I’ve noted is from Claremore, Oklahoma, just across the border from my hometown of Coffeyville, Kansas, said this in an era of installment-plan buying and speculative fever that preceded the 1929 crash. Temptation is still with us. And the desire to live one’s best Instagrammable life has only made show-off tendencies worse.

I’m mindful also that history will decide if the recent speculative fervor around technology is truly warranted. Also, at issue is the wild enthusiasm and dollars thrown at sports gambling and so-called prediction markets.

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Taken together, they sketch an economy that is complicated and consistent with the often mentioned “K shape”. Whether one (speaking of households, businesses, and industries) is on the part of the K that is rising or falling truly matters.

Start with the job market. New unemployment claims fell to 215,000 last week, according to the Labor Department, which tells you employers are not cutting workers in any meaningful wave. But continuing claims -- the people already out and still looking -- rose to about 1.82 million. That gap is the tell. Companies aren’t firing, but they aren’t hiring with much urgency either. If you have a job, you’re probably safe. If you lose one, it takes longer to find the next. Economists have called this a frozen labor market, and it has been the quiet condition of 2026.

The affordability-constrained housing market is a big part of the negative part of the strain. Residential investment fell 7.8 percent in the first quarter, its fifth straight quarterly decline, weighed down by elevated mortgage rates as the Federal Reserve holds its benchmark at 3.5 to 3.75 percent and is debating whether the next move should be up rather than down. For anyone trying to buy a first home or sell the one they have, that matters.

A tale of two economies

Then there is the part of the economy that is, by contrast, booming. Business investment jumped 10.6 percent in the first quarter, up from just 2.4 percent at the end of last year, and almost all of the muscle came from one place: the artificial intelligence buildout. Investment in the information-processing equipment that fills data centers surged at a nearly 40 percent annual pace. By the St. Louis Fed’s accounting, in a January analysis, AI-related spending accounted for roughly 39 percent of all U.S. economic growth through the first three quarters of last year -- a remarkable share to rest on a single category, and one that raises fair questions about how long the boom can run and how strong the rest of the economy really is beneath it.

Hold these pieces next to each other, including data centers booming, housing contracting, layoffs low but hiring frozen, inflation still above target at 4.1 percent on the Fed’s preferred gauge, and a personal savings rate that has slipped to 3 percent from 4.9 percent a year ago, and a pattern comes into focus. This is all part of the K-shaped economy.

The picture is in the letter itself. After a shared shock -- this year, the Iran War that reignited inflation and sent gas prices spiking -- the recovery splits, and the two arms of the K move in opposite directions. Higher-income households, investors, asset owners and the booming AI and tech sectors ride the upper arm: spending on services, watching portfolios climb, largely insulated from higher rates. Lower- and middle-income households, renters, would-be homebuyers, and the rate-sensitive corners of the economy travel the lower arm: squeezed by prices, shut out of housing, drawing down savings to keep up. The aggregate looks fine because the top of the K pulls the average up. But the average hides the divide.

What this means for all of us

With 2.1 percent annualized growth, low jobless claims might look healthy on the surface, and for a real slice of the country, it genuinely is. The pressures worth watching are the ones that are quietly building: a labor market where losing a job means a longer road back, savings cushions worn thin by three years of higher prices, and a housing market that keeps pricing out the next set of buyers. None of that is a crisis today. The economy is still growing, and the AI wave is real; in time, it could lift productivity and wages broadly. But growth that leans this hard on one engine, while so many households run closer to the edge, has less margin for error.

A question for the second half of 2026 isn’t so much whether the economy is expanding, at least for now. It’s whether the expansion ever lifts any of the people from the bottom of the K.

About The Brief, Briefly

The Brief, Briefly is exactly what it sounds like -- a short, plain-English read that steps back after a busy news day and asks a simple question: where does the economy actually stand? Most of the time The Hamrick Brief arrives on its regular weekly schedule. But when the data or the headlines demand it -- a Fed decision, a jobs report, a morning like this one when a half-dozen releases landed at once -- we interrupt the rhythm to make sense of it while it still matters. The goal isn’t to add to the noise. It’s to cut through it, separate the signal from the spin, and tell you what it means for the life you’re actually living.

My ask of you: If this was useful, the best thing you can do is pass it along. Forward it to someone who’s trying to make sense of their own finances, or share it with a colleague who lives in this world. Word of mouth is how independent work like this grows.

The Hamrick Brief is reader-supported, with no ads and no agenda but getting it right. If you value clear, independent economic journalism and want to help keep it that way, please consider becoming a paid subscriber -- it directly makes this work possible.

And I’d genuinely like to hear from you. Tell me what you’re seeing in your corner of the economy, what you want explained next, or where you think I’ve got it wrong. Reply to this email or find me directly -- the best of this newsletter often starts with a reader’s question.

-- Mark

The Brief

Healthcare has returned to the top of the nation’s worry list. As with so much else, Washington is not answering.

Ask Americans what worries them, and one answer now sits above the rest. In Gallup’s latest reading, 61% say they worry a great deal about the availability and affordability of healthcare, more than for any of the other 15 domestic issues tested. It now leads the economy by a full 10 points, after several years when economic worries crowded it out.

Behind it sits a cluster of economic anxieties, each weighing on about half the country: the economy, inflation, federal spending and the deficit, and the distribution of income and wealth. Inflation, at 50%, is at its lowest since Gallup began tracking it in 2022. One note worth making, since the headlines often imply otherwise: illegal immigration ranks near the bottom of the national list at about a third of adults, even as it is the chief concern of Republicans at 55%. It is not what the country loses sleep over.

The pattern is familiar. We recently wrote about Social Security, another basic promise that officials have seen coming for years, yet still fail to fix. Social Security itself registers at 43% here, right at the survey’s average. Healthcare is the same story in a different ledger.

These numbers also reward a careful eye. Overall worry has eased to its lowest level since 2020, driven largely by Republicans, whose concern has fallen sharply now that their party holds the White House. Worry tracks who holds power nearly as much as it tracks conditions. The needs do not rise and fall with the party controlling Congress or White House.

We have also covered the anxiety over artificial intelligence and the fear that it will displace workers. Worth noting, then, that unemployment sits near the bottom of this list, worrying about a third of adults, a long way from the Terminator-style dread of machines deciding humanity’s fate. The real worry is quieter and closer to home. The job, the premium, the bill.

So we are left to fend for ourselves. Until and unless the political establishment treats these as the basic needs they are, there are some things we need to own.

• Treat medical costs as a “when,” not an “if.” A dedicated rainy-day fund, ideally in a high-yield account, turns a crisis into an inconvenience.

• Use the tax-advantaged tools that already exist. A Health Savings Account, for those who qualify through a high-deductible plan, lets money for care grow untaxed and stays yours.

• Read the coverage you have. Preventive care is often fully covered, and itemized bills are frequently wrong. Ask for the line items and question them.

None of these is a substitute for a system that works. It is what responsible people do while waiting for one.

ICYMI: What happened with the Federal Reserve meeting and why it matters for your personal finances and the economy

I’ve covered Federal Reserve chairs for much of my professional life. Last week, I was watching Kevin Warsh’s first news conference as Fed chair. I watched on television for a change, having been in the room for all his predecessors’ news conferences since 2011.

The names change, but the themes are consistent over time. And that’s remarkable, given how much the world has changed since the Alan Greenspan years.

The questions now: Will inflation finally come under control? When will Americans get some relief from today’s elevated borrowing costs?

As expected, the Federal Reserve left its benchmark rate unchanged, holding the target range at 3.5% to 3.75% on a unanimous 12-0 vote. That decision was important, but hardly surprising. The more interesting story was what policymakers told us about tomorrow.

The Fed’s updated Summary of Economic Projections is one of the few times each year we get a glimpse into how officials collectively see inflation, unemployment, economic growth, and interest rates evolving. The projections aren’t promises, and they certainly aren’t guarantees. But they offer a roadmap of sorts, revealing what the people charged with steering the economy believe lies ahead.

This time, the roadmap moved, and it moved in one direction. Back in March, the median policymaker still penciled in a rate cut for this year. By June, that had flipped. Nine of the 18 officials now see at least one rate increase before year-end, six of them see two, and just a single member still expects a cut in 2026. The so-called dot plot, long tilted toward relief, now leans the other way.

The forecasts behind that shift explain why. Officials raised their inflation projection sharply, to 3.6% by year-end from 2.7% in March, pointing to energy costs tied to the conflict in the Middle East. They trimmed expected growth to 2.2% from 2.4% and nudged the unemployment forecast down to 4.3%. The statement itself was short and unusually direct, closing with a flat promise that the committee “will deliver price stability.” For a new chair in his first outing, that line was the whole message. It is effectively saying, in so many words, the war against inflation will be won.

That tilt is not confined to the current committee. A new Duke University survey caught my attention. Researchers asked former Federal Reserve policymakers and senior staff where they think monetary policy should go from here. While the median view was that rates should remain where they are through the end of next year, several respondents said a rate hike could be appropriate if inflation proves more stubborn than expected.

For consumers (all of us): Whether you’re carrying a credit card balance, shopping for a mortgage, financing a car, or finally earning a decent return on your savings, the Fed’s thinking eventually finds its way into your financial life.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment to refinance, buy a home, or make another major financial move, don’t assume lower rates are inevitable or imminent. Likewise, don’t assume they’ll stay at recent levels forever, either. The better approach is to build a plan that works under more than one scenario. My own guess is that rates stay higher for longer, but the economy ultimately has the final say.

The Dashboard: Where the economy stands

-Inflation is back above 4% — its highest in three years. Energy is driving it: gas, utilities, groceries. Your paycheck? Up 3.4%. You’re falling behind.

-The job market is holding. Stocks are up nearly 10% YTD. But mortgages sit at 6.47%, and the Fed may raise rates again if prices don’t cool.

-Consumer spending has been resilient, despite depressed confidence/sentiment.

The macro data won’t match your situation exactly — but some of these forces are hard to outrun, no matter where you stand. That’s why we’re here to explain.

Pulse Check: What are you seeing with inflation and prices in your life

Retail prices are up by about 29% or nearly one-third since January 2020. We’ve recently seen the Consumer Price Index up 4.2% year over year, and the Fed is signalling that the annualized inflation rate will be about 3 and a half percent for 2026.

My question: Have you had a moment recently when you were hit by how much the price has risen for something, in particular? It might happen frequently. For me, it was when I needed to grab lunch for my wife and myself at a fast-food burger outlet (we didn’t have a lot of choices based on location and timing), and I bought two combos, sandwiches, fries, and soft drinks. The total was $24.29. In the back of my mind, I was thinking it might cost less than $20.

If you had a recent “price shock” moment, would you share in the comments below?

The Personal File: When I debated reform of U.S. health care

Retaining gratitude and understanding all these years later: One of the gifts of my high school years was learning to debate, under a coach named Les Kuhns, with whom I have stayed in touch for half a century since.

For an entire season, in 1977 and 1978, my teammates and I argued that year’s national resolution: “That the federal government should establish a comprehensive program to regulate the health care system in the United States.”

Fifty years later, health care has managed to engulf much of the nation’s economy and Americans’ pocketbooks. The country now spends close to one-fifth of its entire economy on health care, about 18% in 2024 and climbing toward 20% within a decade, and by common measures still does not get a good return for it. No wealthy nation devotes a greater share of its economy to health, yet Americans’ life expectancy, 79 years in 2024, still trails the 82.7-year average of comparable wealthy countries by nearly four years. The resolution we debated remains, remarkably (and unfortunately), unresolved. Americans deserve a vigorous debate at the national level on this. Even more, they deserve solutions.

A personal lesson, aside from the important issues we debated all those years ago: Civil, reasonable discussions can be held on pressing issues. If only our broader society would embrace the notion of understanding through constructive conversations. The process begins with every one of us. Who’s with me?

Then & Now: 82 Years Ago This Month FDR Signed the GI Bill

Then: On June 22, 1944, days after the D-Day landings, Franklin Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, the law we remember as the GI Bill. We recall it as a thank-you to returning veterans. It began as something more calculating. The Department of Labor had warned that as many as 15 million service members might come home to no work, and Washington feared the war’s end would tip the country back into depression. The bill was, at its root, a plan to prevent that: tuition and stipends for college or training, low-cost mortgages, small-business and farm loans, and a year of unemployment pay. It passed both chambers unanimously.

The return was staggering. Before the war, college reached only 10 to 15% of young Americans. By 1947, veterans were nearly half of all college enrollment, and within seven years almost 8 million had used the education benefits. Millions more bought first homes with government-backed loans, seeding the suburbs and the broad postwar middle class. One honest caveat belongs here. The program ran through the states, where Jim Crow practices sharply narrowed access for Black veterans, so the prosperity was real but not evenly shared.

Now: This is not nostalgia. It is a proof of concept regarding important bipartisan solutions. The GI Bill cleared both houses of Congress without a single dissenting vote, the kind of common purpose a nation at war can summon and a nation at peace too often cannot. When Washington chose to meet a basic need at scale, the money did not vanish into the deficit. It compounded, in graduates, homeowners, and taxpayers, for a generation.

Mark’s Money Tip: Remembering the old Christmas Club savings accounts

Play Santa for Yourself

It may sound a little odd to be talking about Christmas in June or July, but that’s exactly when savvy savers should start thinking about the holidays.

For those of us of a certain age, the old “Christmas Club” account was a familiar part of banking. You’d deposit a little money throughout the year into a special savings account, often recorded in a passbook, and then receive the accumulated funds in the fall, just in time for holiday shopping.

The passbooks have largely disappeared, but the idea is quietly making a comeback.

Today, many credit unions and smaller financial institutions still offer Holiday Club or Christmas Club accounts. They work much the same way: automatic deposits throughout the year and a payout before the holiday season. While they aren’t as common as they once were, they remain available for consumers who want a dedicated holiday savings vehicle.

Another present day version may be even easier. Many online banks now allow customers to create separate savings “buckets” within a high-yield savings account. One bucket might be labeled “Christmas,” another “Vacation,” and another “Home Repairs.” Automatic transfers can move money into those accounts every payday with little effort.

The benefits can be significant.

Suppose your holiday spending typically totals $1,200. Saving just $100 a month throughout the year gets you there without the stress of a December credit card bill.

That’s important because holiday purchases placed on plastic can become surprisingly expensive. Unless you’re able to pay off the balance immediately and capture cash-back rewards or points without paying interest, today’s credit card rates can quickly turn gifts into debt. Many cards carry annual percentage rates north of 20%, making a modest holiday balance far more costly than most shoppers realize.

The real lesson isn’t about Christmas at all.

It’s about giving every dollar a purpose.

Whether it’s a traditional Holiday Club account at a credit union or a dedicated high-yield savings bucket online, setting money aside gradually throughout the year remains one of the simplest ways to reduce financial stress and avoid costly borrowing.

Here’s what to do to make the saving happen on its own:

• Start with a number. Add up what you spent last holiday season, including gifts, travel, food, postage, and tips, then divide by the months left until you shop. That figure is your monthly target.

• Automate the transfer. Schedule it for the day after payday so the money moves before you can spend it. Saving you never see is saving you never miss.

• Wall it off. Keep the cash in a separate high-yield account or a named savings bucket, not your checking account. Money with a label is far less likely to get spent on something else.

• Let it earn while it waits. A high-yield account can pay real interest over a year of saving. Many old-style Christmas Club accounts pay next to nothing, so compare the rate before you commit.

• Mind the fine print. Some Christmas Club accounts charge a penalty for early withdrawal. If you might need the money sooner, a flexible online bucket is the safer choice.

The holiday season is months away, but a little set aside now means December arrives already paid for. Your future self will be grateful.

Last Word

“The first wealth is health.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Power,” The Conduct of Life (1860)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, circa 1857. Public domain photograph (photographer unidentified), via Wikimedia Commons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a 19th-century American essayist, philosopher, and lecturer whose ideas about self-reliance, independent thought, and our connection to the natural world helped shape generations of writers and thinkers. And yet, for all the mark he left on American intellectual life, his name is less familiar today than it once was.

Emerson ranked health first because it produces a surplus that spills over to others, while sickness, in his words, “cannot serve anyone.” The combination of financial pressures and concern about health now tops the nation’s list of worries.

I have a quick favor to ask: if something in this issue resonated, share it with one person who’d find it valuable. No algorithms, no ad spend. This grows entirely through readers like you passing it along. Thank you.

Have a question? Reply to this email or write to hamrickusa@gmail.com. I include reader questions in future editions of The Hamrick Brief.

Note: I’m a journalist, not a financial advisor. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

The Federal Reserve has left interest rates unchanged, but the bigger story is perhaps a meaningful, some might say hawkish, shift in its outlook. The benchmark rate sticks at 3.5%-3.75%. Both he and his colleagues pledged to win the war on inflation, or in Fed speak, “price stability”.

Of 19 officials, nine signalled the possibility of at least one rate hike by the end of the year. They raised their inflation projections for 2026, lowered their expectations for economic growth, and no longer projected rate cuts as their baseline outlook for this year.

The median forecast for the federal funds rate at year-end rose to 3.8% from 3.4% in March, implying a slightly higher policy rate than today.

Perhaps most striking, the dot plot revealed a wide range of views within the Fed. Policymakers' year-end rate projections span from roughly 3.4% to 4.4%, underscoring significant disagreement about how persistent inflation will be and whether additional tightening may ultimately be required.

If the central bank does decide that a rate boost is warranted, that would stand in contrast to the lower rates President Trump has consistently demanded. He applied unprecedented public pressure on former Chairman Jerome Powell to lower rates, and opted not to renominate the man with whom he replaced Janet Yellen during his first term.

Promised Reforms Are Ahead

Remarkably, new Chairman Kevin Warsh told reporters at his first news conference that he declined to add his own dot to the so-called "dot plot" showing the possible future direction of its benchmark rate. He also announced the creation of task forces looking at how the central bank operates, including how it guides the U.S. economy, including communication, manages its balance sheet, and how it analyzes data. It will also examine productivity and impacts related to artificial intelligence.

Officials continue to see a remarkably resilient economy. They project GDP growth of 2.2% this year and unemployment of 4.3%, even while raising their PCE headline inflation forecast to 3.6%, and core (excluding food and energy) to 3.3%, well above the Fed's 2% target.

The challenge for the Fed is that resilience can cut both ways. Strong growth and a healthy labor market are welcome developments, but that could also make it harder to bring inflation back to target.

The Bottom Line

The line has been drawn: Price stability, or success in the war against inflation, is the only acceptable outcome. For consumers, businesses, and investors, the message is, as of this moment, clear: higher interest rates may be with us longer than many had hoped.

Note: The Brief, Briefly is our home for short, unscheduled dispatches when the news warrants one. The weekly Hamrick Brief continues every Monday as always. Thanks for reading.

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Job approval is no kinder, though the figure depends on who is asking. Gallup, the most-cited benchmark, pegged it at 10 percent in April, with 86 percent disapproving, just above the all-time low of 9 percent. Polling averages that blend many surveys run higher, near 20 percent. By either yardstick, Congress trails almost every institution Americans are asked to judge.

My own take is that Congress collectively deserves low marks, having failed to address, or better yet, solve, a broad range of problems. This week, we’re going to focus on the looming Social Security funding crisis. There are other examples, of course.

Also in this edition: I’m introducing a new Hamrick Dashboard showing where the U.S. economy stands, based only on the data, no hot takes. We want to show you what matters, adding clarity amid the noise to help chart a path with personal finances.

Later in THB, we’ll talk about the disconnect between “Wall Street” and “Main Street”. And I’ll fess up that it took two experiences in my 20s getting hosed on car purchases before I learned my lessons. I hope others can learn from my mistakes. Connecting past and present, we’ll delve into the 10th anniversary of Brexit and take a look at how that’s worked out, as the tug of war over globalization rages on.

The Brief

Social Security faces a 22% cut in 2032. Five months from the midterms, the silence among candidates is concerning.

Washington has understood this problem for 42 years. The trustees’ latest report, released June 9, makes the reckoning plain: Social Security’s retirement trust fund, formally the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance fund, is now projected to run dry in the fourth quarter of 2032, less than seven years away. The law that follows is unforgiving. Once the reserves are gone, the program cannot pay out more than it collects, which means an immediate, across-the-board cut to 78% of scheduled benefits, a reduction of 22% for every retiree on the rolls.

After the report’s release, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget warned that Washington is, in the words of its president Maya MacGuineas, “sleepwalking into a retirement crisis,” noting that the program’s projected shortfall is now about 16 percent wider than a year earlier. Days before the trustees landed on 22 percent, the group had modeled a comparable 24 percent cut state by state. It estimated the average reduction would run about $500 a month, more than the typical retired household spends on groceries. In 29 states, the cut would top $500. Nationally, the lost benefits would total $345 billion in a single year. The report’s title says the rest: no state would be spared.

Americans already sense the ground shifting. In Bankrate’s survey last year, 52 percent of non-retired adults said they expect to rely on Social Security for necessary expenses, and among those already retired, 78% do. More than three-quarters of retirees said they worry the benefits they were promised will not be there.

It is not that no one has proposed anything. Senators Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, and Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, would tax wages above $250,000. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, would reach investment income above $400,000. Reform proposals exist. The will to advance has been lacking in Washington. As one analyst at the American Enterprise Institute put it, no one in either party really wants to do anything.

There is, this week, a flicker of movement, the beginnings of an overdue recognition that the problem needs a fix. Representatives Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, and Tom Suozzi, a New York Democrat, reintroduced the Bipartisan Social Security Commission Act, which would create a 13-member panel to produce a solvency plan within a year and fast-track it to a vote in Congress. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget welcomed the bill, with MacGuineas calling a commission a first step toward lasting bipartisan solutions.

A first step is not a solution, though, and history counsels against confusing the two. The Simpson-Bowles commission, President Obama’s 2010 panel on the federal deficit, co-chaired by former Republican Senator Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles, produced a credible bipartisan plan but needed 14 of its 18 members to send it to Congress and mustered only 11. The recommendations went nowhere. A commission can surface answers; it cannot force a vote or supply the resolve to take one. The Cole and Suozzi bill tries to learn from that failure by lowering the approval threshold and fast-tracking the result.

The unstoppable advancement of time ahead of the 2032 potential crisis is making that avoidance harder to defend. The senators elected this November will be the first federal class whose terms run straight through the projected depletion date. Five months out, with a problem this measurable and this near, the silence is not prudence. It is a choice emblematic of the lack of good leadership and consensus in the public’s greater good, and the country is poorly served by it.

The Hamrick Brief’s New Economy Dashboard

This week, we’re introducing a new feature, a visual intended to tell where the U.S. economy stands based on the latest data. Think of it as a kind of compass to help chart your path when deciding about your life and personal finances.

Here’s what we’re trying to answer for readers: Tell me what I need to know about the economy and why it matters to my life.

Then & Now

The Vote In Favor of Brexit

Then: On June 23, 2016, ten years ago next week, British voters narrowly chose to leave the European Union, 51.9% to 48.1%. It was an early tremor of a wider revolt against globalization, five months before American voters sent Donald Trump to the White House on a promise to pull back from open borders and open markets. Casting the vote was the easy part. Britain did not formally leave until January 31, 2020, and a transition period stretched the break to year’s end, roughly four and a half years from ballot to exit.

Now: A decade later, British opinion has shifted. A majority now tells YouGov that leaving was a mistake, and most say they would vote to rejoin. The appetite is softer than that sounds, though: the single most popular option is just a closer relationship that stops short of going back. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who campaigned to remain, has struck a modest “reset” with Brussels while ruling out rejoining.

Mark, Actually:

The Differences Between “Wall Street” and “Main Street”

The Claim: “When the stock market is up, the economy is doing well. When it drops, the economy is in trouble.”

What you might have heard, and what’s actually true.

Actually: The stock market is a leading indicator of corporate earnings expectations. It is not a report card on how the American economy is functioning for most households. The two can move in opposite directions for extended periods, and often do.

The S&P 500 has recovered from its tariff-driven turbulence and is posting gains for the year. Much of that strong performance has been concentrated in a handful of mega-cap technology companies. The equal-weight S&P 500, which gives the same importance to a regional bank in Ohio as it does to a Silicon Valley giant, tells a more complicated story. When a small number of very large companies are doing the heavy lifting, the headline index can mask what is happening to everyone else.

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index tells a different story still. Small businesses, the ones that employ roughly half of all private-sector workers in America, have been navigating uncertainty around costs, credit, and consumer demand that rarely shows up in the ticker. Wall Street and Main Street are not the same place.

The K-Shaped Economy: The rich get richer… and you know the rest

Economists are among those who use the term “K-shaped recovery” to describe what happens when one part of the economy rebounds strongly while another continues to struggle, the two lines of the K diverging from a common point. Asset holders, particularly those with significant stock portfolios and real estate, have generally done well in recent years.

The top 10% of Americans own 87% of all stocks, according to the Federal Reserve. For everyone else, a rising market is mostly a headline. The headlines telling of soaring stock prices and home values can also provide reminders of what they do not have.

Those without substantial assets, without savings, living paycheck to paycheck, have faced a different set of conditions entirely, to their detriment.

The Varied Main Streets That I Think About – Different American Experiences

I think about this in concrete, and frankly, personal terms. Main streets across America are as varied as its people. I have some personal connection to each of the communities mentioned here.

My beloved hometown on the Kansas-Oklahoma border: I grew up in Coffeyville, Kansas. It is a small town with a proud history, the Dalton Gang raid of 1892, a real industrial past, and people who work hard and care deeply about their community. Since my youth, it has gotten smaller. The downtown has been hollowed out over the decades, as it has in so many small American cities, despite the genuine efforts of the people who stayed and fought for it. Back in the 1970s, my father was editor of the then-vibrant daily printed newspaper, The Coffeyville Journal. The photo shows what was once one of the two banks targeted by the Daltons, now home to the local chamber of commerce in a largely depleted downtown.

A lot has changed over the past five decades. When I graduated from high school in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1978, it was a community of roughly 15,000 people. Today, the population is closer to 8,500, with a median household income of about $45,700. That’s well below the U.S. median of roughly $80,600. About one in five residents lives below the federal poverty line, the government's measure of having income too low to meet basic needs.

Western New York: My wife is from Niagara Falls, New York. We met and were married in nearby Buffalo many years ago. The Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world, has relative prosperity on the Canadian side, and a down-and-out vibe on the NY side of the border. Tourists come from everywhere to see the falls. And yet the American side has struggled economically for a generation, with vacant storefronts, population loss, and a community that has never quite captured the prosperity that the geography would seem to promise.

The Big Apple: Then there is New York City, which contains multitudes. Walk from a thriving block in Midtown to a neighborhood still finding its footing and you might have crossed no borough line, just a few streets. The city’s main thoroughfares hum with energy and commerce. Wall Street, and all that’s connected to the S&P 500, feels at home in Manhattan, and the financial district in particular.

LA, where the wealth divide is as obvious as ever: It’s the community that’s home to Beverly Hills, the history and mythology of Hollywood, and countless homeless: Los Angeles tells yet another story. Downtown LA has not recovered from the setbacks of the pandemic. Some longtime residents describe it as unsafe. A city of enormous wealth and creativity has a downtown core that remains, for many, a place to avoid rather than celebrate.

Music City, USA, home to honky tonks, Vanderbilt, and the state capital: Nashville has a downtown that is full of tourists, energy, and construction cranes. The bachelorette parties and the honky-tonks and the new hotels are real. So is the question of who gets priced out as the boom roars on.

Home prices in the Nashville area have risen by roughly 130% over the past decade, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, more than doubling in value. That's been a tremendous boost for homeowners who have been there over that period, building wealth through appreciation, but it has also created a significant barrier for prospective buyers who once viewed Nashville as an affordable bargain destination.

The economy is constantly sorting out winners — and losers.

Why It Matters: The S&P 500 and other major stock market averages will move up and down. They tell you something real and useful about the expectations of investors for the earnings of large publicly traded companies. But they tell you little, if anything, about Coffeyville, or Niagara Falls, downtown Los Angeles, or anything about the individual communities across the nation.

When someone tells you the economy is great because the market is up, ask them which economy they mean. The answer depends on which “Main Street” is nearby.

Now, I’d love to hear from you in the comments: What are you experiencing in your life or community? Does it align with anything I’ve shared here?

Mark’s Mistakes

What I Learned After I Blew It Buying Cars When I Was Young

I bought two cars in my 20s. Both were textbook examples of what not to do. That’s learning the hard way, which cost me money, but earned me some valuable experiences.

The first time, I let the salesman run what I’d call the sucker playbook. He asked how much I wanted to spend per month, and I told him. That single answer handed him control of the entire deal. He found a cheap new car that fit my monthly budget and arranged the financing. What I didn’t fully appreciate was that stretching the loan term is the easiest way to hit a monthly number while costing you far more over time.

Five years later, when I needed to trade that car in for one with air conditioning (yes, the first one didn’t have it), I made the same two mistakes again. And the salesman added floor mats to the bill without asking. That one was so egregious that two of his colleagues called him out on the showroom floor.

So, what have I learned since?

Treat the purchase, the trade-in, and the financing as three completely separate transactions. Dealers make money by bundling them; keeping them separate puts you in control.

Shop for financing before you set foot in a dealership. For my most recent purchase, I secured a low-rate loan through a credit union before I started shopping. I also kept the loan term to three years, so the car was paid off relatively quickly and I paid far less in interest. For context: the average rates on new and used car loans today are around 7%, depending on your credit, so the rate you lock in matters enormously. I’ll go back to one of my money mantras: Shop around for the best rate.

Treat the trade-in separately. I ultimately traded with a different dealer who gave me the best price. You don’t owe your trade-in to the dealer you’re buying from.

Negotiate the price, not the payment. I used a no-haggle dealer with consistent, transparent pricing, which took the stress out of the final step.

One broader principle I’ve long favored: buy used and let someone else absorb the steepest depreciation, the loss in value that hits the moment a new car leaves the lot. With the average new vehicle now running at about $50,000, and the total cost of ownership (fuel or electricity, insurance, maintenance) adding substantially to that figure, a lot is riding on doing your homework.

If you’ve already got this dialed in, congratulations. If not, take it from someone who learned the hard way, back before so much good information was available online to help navigate the proverbial bumps in the road: Do your homework and don’t fall prey to hardball salesmanship. The transition should be equally productive for both the buyer and the seller.

Last Word

“Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.”

Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate in economics, May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009

Paul Samuelson was arguably the most influential economist of the twentieth century, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics, and the author of a textbook that taught generations of students, including many who went on to shape economic policy in Washington and beyond. When he said investing should be boring, he meant it as high praise for discipline and low praise for the financial entertainment complex, including financial television that covers the markets like ESPN covers sports. Long-term investors aren’t traders. But that doesn’t have the same buzzworthy allure as breathlessly reported buy or sell recommendations.

The gambling comparison is even more important at a time when many are hoping, instead of owning or investing, to throw money away through sports betting and cryptocurrencies. There’s truth behind the saying in the gaming industry that the house always wins. Admittedly, I’m a fan of playing blackjack in a real casino every few years, but I recognize it’s entertainment, not an investment.

I have a quick favor to ask: if something in this issue resonated, share it with one person who’d find it valuable. No algorithms, no ad spend. This grows entirely through readers like you passing it along. Thank you.

Have a question? Reply to this email or write to hamrickusa@gmail.com. I include reader questions in future editions of The Hamrick Brief.

Note: I’m a journalist, not a financial advisor. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

Last week, we introduced you to the Misery Index -- the sixty-year-old tool that adds unemployment and inflation together to measure economic pain. We closed with a question: if the Misery Index tells us when Americans are financially hurting, what would tell us when we are gaining ground?

Today, that question gets one answer. This week, we introduce a new economic measure built for the other side of the ledger. Elsewhere in The Brief, we have a myth worth busting about credit cards, a business history story about the humble zebra stripe that quietly rewired the American economy, and a closing word from one of the great self-made entrepreneurs in American history.

The Brief

Introducing the Hamrick American Prosperity Index -- HAPI

Friday’s jobs report showed that 59.2 percent of Americans age 16 and older are working. The latest inflation-adjusted wage data showed average hourly earnings down 0.3 percent from a year earlier.

Add those two figures together and you get 58.9.

That number doesn’t appear anywhere in the government’s economic releases. But we are sharing it with you.

That figure is the Hamrick American Prosperity Index, or HAPI. It answers the question we left open last week. The Misery Index marks when Americans are hurting; no widely followed number marks when they are gaining ground. HAPI is built to be that number.

The formula is simple. Take the Employment-Population Ratio, the share of Americans 16 and older who are working, and add the year-over-year change in inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings. That is HAPI. Higher is better, and it can be updated every month from the same Bureau of Labor Statistics releases that feed the Misery Index.

Each half earns its place. The Employment-Population Ratio beats the unemployment rate here because it counts everyone, including the millions who have stopped looking for work and so vanish from the jobless rate. Real wages matter because a paycheck that does not keep up with prices is not a raise. It is a pay cut in disguise. Together they answer what households actually want to know: are more people working, and is the work paying off?

What the History Tells Us

The table below shows HAPI at key moments in American economic history. Three readings stand out.

Current reading -- May 2026 employment, April real wages

** 2020 note: Both figures are distorted. Mass layoffs fell disproportionately on lower-wage workers, mechanically lifting the wage average. The HAPI reading that year is not meaningful on its own.

Because real earnings data are released on a different schedule, the current HAPI reading combines May employment data with April real-wage data.

2000 as a “recent” high

Among the periods examined here, 2000 stands out as the strongest HAPI reading. With 64.4 percent of Americans employed and real wages growing modestly, HAPI reached 64.9. That is the benchmark everything else gets measured against.

1980 is the cautionary tale. The Employment-Population Ratio was actually healthy at 59.5 percent, but stagflation was devouring paychecks -- real wages were down nearly 5 percent on the year, dragging HAPI to 54.8. HAPI captures what the employment rate alone could not: that a lot of Americans had jobs and were still falling behind.

2020 carries an asterisk and should be read with caution. The figures are distorted by changes in who was working and who wasn’t during the pandemic, and the editorial note in the table explains why.

Where We Stand Today

As of the most recent data, the Employment-Population Ratio stands at 59.2 percent, taken from the May jobs report released June 5. Real wages, by contrast, have slipped into negative territory. The latest figure available, covering April, shows inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings down 0.3 percent from a year earlier, as price increases ran ahead of pay. That puts HAPI at 58.9. It sits about 6 points below the boom-era peak of 2000, below the 62.5 reading of 2019, and just under the 59.2 of 2010. It clears the 1980 stagflation trough of 54.8 by roughly four points. The drag is not employment, which is moderate, but paychecks that have stopped keeping up with prices.

In plain terms, a moderate share of Americans are working, but their paychecks are no longer outpacing inflation -- they are falling slightly behind it. HAPI has dropped below where it stood before the pandemic and well below the broad-based prosperity of the late 1990s. The economy is not in crisis, but it is not gaining ground either. The May real-earnings update, due Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, will show whether that slippage deepened.

The Hamrick American Prosperity Index (HAPI) is a benchmark developed for The Hamrick Brief.

Mark, Actually

The Claim: “Credit cards are bad. Cut them up and pay cash for everything.”

What you might have heard, and what’s actually true.

Actually: Credit cards are tools. Like most tools, they work well in the right hands and cause damage in the wrong ones. The blanket advice to avoid them entirely ignores some straightforward financial math.

Used correctly, paying the balance in full every month, a rewards credit card is a straightforward transfer of value from the issuer to you. Cash-back cards typically return 1.5 to 2 percent on every purchase. Travel cards can return considerably more in specific categories. On $2,000 a month in ordinary household spending, a 2 percent cash-back card returns $480 a year. Those are real dollars.

Credit cards also build credit history, which determines the interest rate you pay on mortgages, car loans, and other debt. A strong credit score built responsibly over time is worth thousands of dollars in reduced borrowing costs over a lifetime. Avoiding credit cards entirely can make that harder to achieve.

Why It Matters: The advice to cut up your credit cards usually comes from a real place -- the damage that high-interest revolving debt can do to a household budget is severe and well-documented. Credit card interest rates now average above 20 percent annually, and carrying a balance at those rates is genuinely destructive. But the solution to that problem is to pay the balance in full each month, not avoiding the card entirely. The card is not the problem. The unpaid balance is.

If you carry a balance today, the priority should be to pay it down aggressively. Once the balance goes down to zero, the card returns to being an asset, not a liability. Like a hammer, you can use it to injure your thumb or build something with it. The same is true of credit cards.

Then & Now

June 26, 1974: A Pack of Gum Changes Everything

On the morning of June 26, 1974, in a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, cashier Sharon Buchanan ran a ten-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum across a scanner and heard a beep. It was the first retail item ever sold using a Universal Product Code barcode. The pack of gum cost 67 cents. It is now in the Smithsonian.

The barcode itself had been in development for years. An IBM team led by George Laurer had cracked the technical challenge of printing a machine-readable symbol small enough to fit on a package and reliable enough to scan under real-world conditions. The Uniform Grocery Product Code Council had adopted a standard in 1973. But the technology did not become real until that morning in Troy, when a cashier and a checkout scanner did what the engineers had promised they could do.

What followed was one of the quietest revolutions in the history of American commerce. Supermarkets that adopted scanners found checkout lines moving faster, pricing errors dropping, and, most significantly, inventory data flowing in real time for the first time. Retailers could see exactly what was selling, when, and at what price. The guesswork that had governed ordering and stocking for a century began to give way to data.

Walmart understood this before almost anyone else. The company built its own satellite network in the 1980s to transmit barcode sales data from its stores to its suppliers overnight, creating a supply chain so efficient it became a competitive weapon. The barcode was not just a faster way to ring up groceries; it was the foundation of modern inventory management, just-in-time manufacturing, and eventually the logistics infrastructure that made Amazon possible.

The next time you tap your phone to pay for something and the transaction completes in two seconds, trace that back to a pack of Juicy Fruit in Ohio, fifty-two years ago this month. That pack of gum was the starting point for the data economy we now take for granted.

Mark On the Record

The May employment report, released Friday, beat expectations on hiring, with March and April payrolls revised higher and the unemployment rate holding, as expected, at 4.3 percent.

Cory Smith of The National News Desk quoted some of my analysis in his piece, and he raised a question I get from time to time (that I didn’t know he would be addressing, but am pleased he did): Is there evidence that the numbers are being inflated by the Trump administration? My take is that we don’t see evidence that the data has been hijacked for political gain. Two days before the Labor Department’s report, ADP reported solid private-sector hiring, with gains spread more evenly across industries. That independent read pointed the same way.

Check out his story, which takes up the validity question.

https://thenationaldesk.com/news/americas-news-now/jmay-jobs-report-beats-expectations-but-wages-continue-to-lose-the-race-to-inflation-bls-may-2026-jobs-report

Last Word

“Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”

-- Madam C.J. Walker, widely regarded as the first self-made female millionaire in America

Madam C.J. Walker built her fortune in the early twentieth century by selling hair care products door to door, training a salesforce of thousands of Black women at a time when many other doors were closed to them. She did not wait for the economy to make room. She made room herself. Walker’s remarkable and historic success story reminds us that the people who move forward sensing opportunity seldom wait for permission or for ideal conditions.

Quick favor: if something in this issue resonated, share it with one person who’d find it valuable. No algorithms, no ad spend. This grows entirely through readers like you passing it along. Thank you.

Note: I’m a journalist, not a financial advisor. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

The Brief: The Misery Index Isn’t as Bad as One Might Think

In the 1970s, economist Arthur Okun developed a measure of economic discomfort. He added the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. Simple as that. He called it the Misery Index.

There was nothing especially complicated about it. The logic was straightforward: when people are struggling to find work, and prices are rising faster than paychecks, life becomes more financially stressful.

The index hit its all-time high, near 22, in mid-1980, when inflation was running above 14 percent. Unemployment would climb past 10 percent later, in late 1982, during Paul Volcker’s aggressive campaign to break inflation. Americans who lived through that period hardly needed an economist to tell them the economy felt painful.

So where does the Misery Index stand now? Inflation, measured by the Consumer Price Index, was running at 3.8 percent over the year in April. The unemployment rate stood at 4.3 percent. Put them together, and the Misery Index comes out to roughly 8.1.

That is well below the levels Americans experienced in the early 1980s. But it is also notably higher than the relatively stable years before the pandemic, when inflation was low, and unemployment hovered near historic lows.

At the same time, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index has fallen to the lowest reading in the survey’s history.

That disconnect helps explain why many Americans still feel uneasy about the economy even when some traditional indicators appear relatively stable.

The Misery Index captures two important pressures: inflation and unemployment. But it does not tell the whole story. It does not measure whether wages are keeping up with costs (not just inflation), whether families feel financially secure, or whether Americans believe their children will have greater opportunity than they did.

Next week, we’ll look at a new attempt to measure Americans’ prosperity.

A New Federal Reserve Chairman Faces Big Challenges

Kevin Warsh has assumed the job of Federal Reserve chairmanship that Jerome Powell held for eight years, inheriting an economy that remains volatile and complex.

Inflation has not fully returned to the Fed’s 2 percent target. The conflict with Iran has led to higher prices for energy and risks passing through to other goods, including food. The labor market is cooling gradually, but has not cracked. Political pressure for lower interest rates appears to have been reserved for former Chairman Jerome Powell, now a board member. Political independence, the cause cited by Powell in deciding to remain a Fed board member, is widely regarded as vitally important for the central bank to be successful.

For now, Warsh and the Federal Open Market Committee appear to be poised to hold steady. Markets have also backed away from aggressive rate-cut expectations that were common earlier this year.

What does that mean for households? The high-rate environment is not ending on anyone’s schedule but the data’s.

If you carry variable-rate debt, including credit card balances, adjustable-rate mortgages, or home equity lines of credit, borrowing costs are likely to remain elevated for a while longer.

Bankrate’s latest weekly survey had the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate at 6.56 percent.

The Fed’s dual mandate, stable prices and maximum employment, translated to low inflation and a healthy job market, reflects the same tension Arthur Okun was trying to capture decades ago with the Misery Index.

Watch the May jobs report, due Friday, June 5. Beyond the headline payroll number (the number of new jobs added or lost) and the unemployment rate, recently at 4.3 percent, pay attention to labor force participation, wage growth, and, as part of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, the quits rate. The latter is an employment confidence signal. When people believe they’ll find a good job, they feel comfortable quitting. When the job market is more challenging, fewer feel confident about quitting. Those are among the indicators the Fed is watching most closely.

Then & Now: June 1, 1980, Ted Turner Launches CNN

Forty-six years ago today, Ted Turner launched CNN from Atlanta with an idea many people in television considered odd: news twenty-four hours a day. I remember being fascinated by it when attending the University of Kansas as a broadcast news student.

Some mocked CNN as the “Chicken Noodle Network.” Established broadcasters dismissed the concept as unnecessary and financially unrealistic. Turner, after all, was not a traditional network executive. He was a bold entrepreneur and yacht racer who had built a media company through instinct, ambition, and risk-taking.

But Turner understood something many missed: the appetite for information does not operate on a schedule. It was an early bet, ultimately validated, against appointment television, a concept that has faded as consumers have “always-on” access to programming and information.

I have some personal memories of Turner from when I spent time with him at The National Press Club, where I was president in 2011 and an officer, board member and committee chair for years before that. He had a usually charming sense of humor. During a previous visit, he told me that I was wearing my necktie too low. He was right. It was good advice, actually, and I didn’t mind at all.

Back to 2011, we spent time in the historic Press Club president’s office, which I had the privilege of occupying before his appearance with the late pioneering Texas oil tycoon and fierce corporate raider T. Boone Pickens. I don’t remember the name of the woman with Turner, whom he introduced as his neighbor. He quipped, “You know what the Bible says, ‘Love thy neighbor’ “

Suffice it to say, among the five of us, including Pickens’ then-wife Madeleine, I was the least wealthy, by far. They discussed energy policy and climate change. You can watch the archived video with the link below via C-SPAN. Pickens was also quite polite and engaging. The Oklahoma-born billionaire noted that he was familiar with my hometown of Coffeyville, Kansas, which I thought was kind.

https://www.c-span.org/program/national-press-club/renewable-and-alternative-energy/250001

What Turner built reshaped television news and, eventually, the broader media business itself. CNN helped create the modern twenty-four-hour news cycle and changed how governments, corporations, and markets respond to breaking events.

The Gulf War helped elevate CNN into a global institution. The O.J. Simpson trial turned nonstop live coverage into a ratings force. By the time Turner sold CNN to Time Warner in 1996, the operation had become one of the most influential media properties in the world.

Turner died recently, prompting many nostalgic tributes for him and for the ingenious idea that gave rise to CNN and round-the-clock television news. CNN has changed its approach to less news coverage and more commentary with panelists. Previously, there was standalone business and sports programming, which was abandoned. I liked it better before. Personally, I’m not interested in hot takes. I believe they generate mistrust at a time when trust in institutions, including the news industry, is low.

Today, many legacy media companies are confronting the same kind of disruption that Turner created, as audiences continue to migrate toward streaming platforms, podcasts, newsletters, and creator-driven media.

You Asked

“Should I pay off debt or invest right now? I feel like I’m spinning my wheels doing both.” -- Amanda G., Dallas, TX.

This is one of the most common questions in personal finance, and the answer largely depends on the interest rate on the debt.

High-interest debt, especially credit card balances carrying rates around 20 percent or more, should usually be paid down before investing beyond an employer retirement match. There are very few investments that can reliably produce returns anywhere near that level.

Low-interest debt is a different calculation. A mortgage below 5 percent or a federal student loan near 4 percent may allow more room to prioritize long-term investing, particularly inside tax-advantaged retirement accounts.

Historically, diversified stock market portfolios have generated long-run annual returns above those borrowing costs, although past performance never guarantees future results.

Debt in the middle range, roughly 6 to 8 percent, becomes more personal. Some people value the psychological relief of becoming debt-free. Others prefer maintaining a consistent investing habit while gradually reducing debt. Reasonable people can arrive at different answers.

One principle that almost always holds up for workers: capture the full employer match in your 401(k) if one is available. You reduce income tax liability and fund retirement. It is difficult to find another guaranteed return so attractive.

Have a question? Write to me at hamrickusa@gmail.com. I read every message and include reader questions in future editions of The Hamrick Brief.

Last Word

“Even experts don’t know what the weather will do. Even millionaires don’t know what Wall Street will do.” -- Will Rogers, September 6, 1933

Rogers was from Claremore, Oklahoma, not far from Coffeyville, Kansas, where I grew up. The National Press Club -- where I served as president -- is said to have called him “Ambassador at Large of the United States,” which tells you something about how seriously Washington took a man who made his living poking fun at it.

As a young person, I saw James Whitmore perform his one-man show as Rogers. What struck me then, and stays with me now, is how Rogers lampooned politicians of every stripe without malice -- and how that even-handedness is what made people listen.

Next week, we will introduce a new measure of financial well-being, which I’m excited to share.

Have a question? I’d love to hear from you with a comment or inquiry. You can find me on social media and at hamrickusa@gmail.com.

Note: I’m a journalist, not a financial advisor. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

The Creator Economy: Massive, growing, and hard to measure

Millions of Americans, people like you, are funding an industry worth billions, one stream, one subscription, one skipped cable bill at a time.

Every day, you vote with your attention – and your dollars. And that vote, your dollars-- are quietly reshaping the American economy in ways the official data can barely see.

When you stream an independent podcast instead of turning on the radio, when you subscribe to a newsletter rather than a local newspaper, when you watch a YouTube creator instead of the evening news, you’re not just changing your habits. You’re redirecting economic energy. That’s away from legacy institutions built around transmitters, printing presses, and cable contracts. It’s toward something newer, smaller, and in many ways more resilient: the creator economy.

Local television stations are losing viewers. Traditional radio is fighting for relevance. Much to the dismay of myself and many others, CBS News Radio signed off in recent days. I had the honor of being included in their newscasts many times over the years, providing comment and analysis. Elsewhere, the cable bundle is unraveling. Newspapers that once dominated their markets have shrunk, merged, or disappeared entirely. Coverage of elected officials is diminishing, which is unhealthy for a democracy. Magazines that defined American culture for generations are publishing their final issues. This is the visible side of a massive transfer of audience, dollars, and attention that has been building for two decades.

But here’s what’s less visible: where that attention — and dollars — are going. It’s flowing to individuals, writers, podcasters, videographers, analysts, who have built direct relationships with their audiences and, in many cases, built genuine businesses in the process.

The creator economy has been estimated at roughly $250 billion today, potentially approaching $500 billion in the coming years. But even that figure almost certainly understates the reality, because our economic measurement tools weren’t built for this world. GDP accounting, employment surveys, industry classifications, they were designed for an era of factories and broadcasting licenses, not Substack subscriptions and YouTube revenue shares.

Consider what the numbers already show. In 2025, YouTube surpassed Disney to become the world’s largest media company by revenue, $62 billion to Disney’s $60.9 billion, according to financial research firm MoffettNathanson. Not a studio. Not a network. A platform built on, but no longer restricted to, individual creators. YouTube TV now has around 10 million subscribers (I made the switch from cable a few years ago) and is on pace to overtake traditional cable providers. The shift isn’t coming. It’s here.

Beneath the surface of the economy we measure, there is an economy we can barely see. It is dynamic, innovative, and growing. And the fact that it doesn’t show up cleanly in the data doesn’t make it any less real.

Right now, as you read this, you’re part of it.

Thank you for that.

Mark, Actually

What you might have heard, and what’s actually true.

The Claim: “The stock market is too risky for regular people.”

Actually: This belief has kept too many regular Americans out of long-term wealth building. For better or for worse, home ownership is seen as the primary path toward wealth creation in the U.S.

Diversification in investing is key. Index funds, ETFs, and diversified mutual funds let you own a piece of the whole market at low cost, without picking individual stocks or chasing trends. The real risk most people never calculate is staying out entirely, letting inflation quietly erode cash savings over time.

Why It Matters: The stock market is not a game reserved for the wealthy. It remains one of the most effective long-term wealth-building tools available to ordinary Americans, like myself.

Then & Now

May 26, 1896: The Day Charles Dow Gave Ordinary Americans a Window Into the Market

One hundred thirty years ago, a journalist from rural Connecticut published a number that would become one of the most quoted figures in American finance: It was 40.94. That was the first reading of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the man behind it -- Charles Dow -- had been searching for a way to give ordinary readers a simple, honest measure of how the market was doing.

Dow taught himself the language of markets through decades of financial reporting, something I can certainly relate to. His conviction was simple: financial information should not be a private language for only the wealthy. He had co-founded the Wall Street Journal on that principle. The DJIA was its practical expression -- a single, public, daily number that told anyone who cared to look how America’s industrial economy was doing. At the time, investing was considered the exclusive province of brokers and tycoons.

The index started at 40.94 and now hit a new record high above 50,000 this past week. Of the original 12 companies -- leather makers, sugar refiners, coal and iron producers -- not one remains.

For most investors today, the more meaningful benchmark is the S&P 500, which tracks 500 companies across the broader economy and underlies the index funds and ETFs that financial planners most widely recommend. Dow probably couldn’t have imagined either index reaching where they stand today. What he would recognize is the purpose: give ordinary people a clear window into the markets that shape their lives.

Some decades ago, I was a young broadcast journalist covering financial news, interviewing veteran stock market mavens and economists for the Associated Press broadcast operation. One of the most colorful was the late, great Larry Wachtel, then of Prudential Securities. He was at once kind and colorful. I remember asking him about the significance of a big move in the DJIA during a given day, and his stock reply was “The Dow is just an index of 30 stocks!” His point was well taken: the market is much more than that narrow index, and the opportunities associated with it are much larger. I learned not to ask that question of him, or anyone else, the same way again. That’s not to denigrate the index. It’s all about perspective.

The Wall Street Journal that Dow founded has itself become a massive enterprise. Through decades of ownership changes, it ultimately became a crown jewel of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, one of the world’s largest media companies. The little financial newspaper built on the idea that ordinary people deserved honest market information now reaches millions of readers globally. Dow, the self-taught journalist who wanted to democratize financial news, would likely find that fitting.

The conviction -- that markets should be transparent, and that information should flow to everyone, not just the privileged few -- is as relevant in May 2026 as it was in May 1896.

Mark’s Mistake

Lessons learned over my lifetime.

I started working and drawing a paycheck at 15 at KGGF Radio in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1975.

My mistake is that I spent it. It’s something that I regret to this day.

Not recklessly, I wasn’t gambling or getting into trouble. I just didn’t save. The concept of investing felt abstract and distant, something for adults with suits and briefcases. I didn’t understand compounding. I didn’t have an emergency fund or meaningful savings account. The money came in and went out.

There is one investment I did make in those years, almost by accident. I put money into DJ equipment, speakers, turntables, the works, because people were asking me to spin records at dances and reunions. It turned into a real business. A talent agency in Wichita asked to represent me. I was earning several hundred dollars a night from those gigs. By any measure, that was serious money for a teenager in southeast Kansas in the 1970s.

But I still didn’t save it.

Here is what I wish someone had told me then: if I had put even $25 a month into a basic index fund starting at 15, the math over the next 50 years, even accounting for the outrageous commission fees of that era, would look very different today. That is the power of compounding. Time is the asset most young people don’t realize they’re spending.

The mistake wasn’t that I worked too little or earned too little. I’ve worked hard over the course of my career. The mistake was not understanding that the money I was making at 15 was the cheapest money I would ever have, because I had time left to let it grow.

Learn from my mistake: Start saving and investing early. Even small. The math will do the hard work.

Ahead of the Curve — Social Security

What we’re watching before the rest of the world catches up.

Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment, better known as the COLA, is not officially announced until October. Typically, the adjustment to the payments comes in the following January.

Based on the latest inflation data, The Senior Citizens League is projecting the 2027 COLA at 3.9 percent, a full 1.1 percentage points above this year’s 2.8 percent adjustment. For the average retired worker, that translates to roughly $81 more per month, bringing the average benefit to around $2,162.

But here’s the catch, and it’s a significant one. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that a COLA in that range would worsen Social Security’s long-term shortfall by approximately $300 billion and push the old-age trust fund's insolvency three months closer to the edge. A bigger check today, in other words, accelerates a harder reckoning tomorrow.

And for the millions of retirees counting on that increase, the on-the-ground math is even more sobering. More than half of seniors surveyed by The Senior Citizens League say they have already skipped medical products or services in the past year due to cost. An $80 monthly bump sounds meaningful until Medicare premiums, housing, utilities, and groceries take their share first. How inflation, now surging, unfolds in the coming months will dictate the eventual amount.

Mark On the Record

Americans are worried whether Social Security money will be there for them when they need it

My own Bankrate survey work on Social Security found that more than three in four Americans worry they won’t receive the benefits they were promised, a finding that prompted me to observe there is “a vast divide between Americans’ concern about the looming Social Security funding shortfall and the lack of serious and thorough conversation among elected officials about what to do about it.” That divide hasn’t closed. If anything, as mentioned above, the early COLA projections for 2027 suggest it’s widening. This year’s mid-term elections provide an opportunity for voters to prioritize the issue, or to favor candidates and elected officials who do. Future and current retirees are depending on it.

Shopper’s Secret Tip

The Soda Aisle Has a Secret. Here’s the Inside Story.

Let’s call it soda sticker shock.

The store-brand aliases are hiding in plain sight. The Dr Pepper clones: Dr. Thunder at Walmart, Dr. K at Kroger, Dr. Dynamite at Safeway. The Mountain Dew clones: Mountain Lightning at Walmart, Mountain K at Kroger. Same plant, same equipment, nearly identical formula.

When you buy a national brand, a significant portion of that price tag goes toward Super Bowl ads and celebrity endorsements. Store brands spend zero on national advertising. By choosing the house brand, you’re refunding yourself the marketing tax, saving 40 to 60 percent per case.

The point isn’t to avoid buying a Pepsi or Coca-Cola again. It’s those seemingly small decisions, made consistently over time, that have a way of adding up. The same logic behind compounding in investing applies at the grocery store.

I’m a fan of store brands generally, as our family’s main cook and grocery shopper. And in truth, I don’t buy much soda myself, but I do look to optimize my choices when I head to my favorite grocery store, typically every Sunday. One of the best ways to find lower prices is to focus on store brands, and less on highly processed food, which means making more of what we eat ourselves. That’s typically a healthier choice as well.

A few dollars saved per trip, multiplied across 52 weeks, is real money. And in this economy, real money matters.

Last Word

“Time is your friend. Impulse is your enemy.”

- John C. Bogle, founder of Vanguard and creator of the index fund

The late John Bogle built Vanguard on a deceptively simple idea: that most investors would be better served by owning the whole market, at the lowest possible cost, for the longest possible time, than by trying to beat it. He was right. Decades of data have borne him out. I like the quotation because it speaks to the need to be methodical, not emotional, when managing money and to harness the value of time.

This is meant to be a two-way conversation. If something in this week’s edition sparked a question, a memory, or a strong opinion -- I want to hear it. Comment, or find me on social media. The best ideas for future editions come from readers like you.

Note: I’m a journalist and economic analyst, not an investment adviser. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

Crossing A Historic Debt Line

It hasn’t really broken through the news cycle. The federal debt has crossed a dramatic red line. The amount the United States owes the public now equals roughly 100 percent of everything the country produces in a year. We have been here before, but only once: at the end of World War II, when the bill came due for defeating fascism. This time, the bill is for ourselves.

In The Hamrick Brief this week, we examine what that milestone really means.

We also travel back to this month in 1862, when President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act. The largest wealth transfer in American history was based on the theory that ownership builds citizens.

Plus, in Mark, Actually: Does the Federal Reserve simply print money? As for the answer: Well, it’s complicated.

All of it, for the life you’re actually living.

The Brief

A risky ratio: Debt to GDP reaches 100 Percent

America Owes the Public as Much as It Makes in a Year

Some numbers describe the economy. Others describe something deeper about the country itself. The federal debt held by the public has just become the second kind.

I sometimes say that ours is a paycheck-to-paycheck nation. Many Americans live that way, with too little money saved. Turns out that’s the way our elected officials have been handling the federal budget, too. They’re effectively running the government on the equivalent of a credit card, and the limit keeps needing to be raised.

As of fiscal year 2026, debt held by the public is on track to reach roughly 101 percent of gross domestic product, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. That means we owe the public as much as the entire economy produces in a year. The federal debt total is approaching 39 trillion dollars.

Source: Congressional Budget Office, Budget and Economic Outlook 2026–2036 (February 2026).

The last time federal debt exceeded GDP: Harry Truman was in the White House, and the country had just spent four years financing a global war. The previous record, set in 1946, was 106 percent. CBO projects we will pass that mark within a decade and reach 120 percent of GDP by 2036, with no recession, no war, and no policy change required to get there. Just compounding.

Debt is not, by itself, a moral failing. Borrowing built the highways, won the war, and held the economy together through the financial crisis and the pandemic. But the trajectory we are on is not sustainable, and saying so is not a partisan claim. Deficits projected to average 5 to 6 percent of GDP every year for the next decade -- in good times and bad -- are a different animal from the borrowing that financed past emergencies.

The part that touches your life most directly is interest. The CRFB estimates that if interest rates rise just one percentage point above current projections, bringing the 10-year Treasury from an average of 4.3 percent to 5.3 percent, it would add 3.5 trillion dollars to the debt over the next decade. Interest costs have nearly tripled since 2020 and now exceed what the country spends on national defense, the highest share of the economy in 85 years.

That money cannot go to roads, research, or retirement security. It simply services the debt we already carry.

The two largest drivers of long-run debt are not foreign aid or congressional earmarks, the easy targets in any campaign ad. They are the programs most Americans rely on, Social Security, Medicare, and the interest on what we have already borrowed, set against a tax code that does not bring in enough to pay for them. Effective, prudent fiscal policy is not the absence of borrowing. It is borrowing for things that build the country, paid back over time, with the discipline a household applies to a mortgage rather than a credit card.

What’s at stake? Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, put it plainly: “The higher we allow our debt to grow, the more we erode our own prosperity and that of future generations. Rising debt compromises affordability by slowing income growth, pushing up interest rates, and increasing inflationary pressures. Debt squeezes our budgets with massive interest costs. It exposes us needlessly to challenges from geopolitical rivals. And without corrective action, rising debt could spark a devastating fiscal crisis.”

The 100 percent line is not a cliff. But it is a kind of alarm sounding, the kind a thoughtful country pauses at long enough to ask what comes next. There is still time to make better decisions. There is less time than there used to be.

Mark On-Air: A sampling of Mark’s recent appearances on-air and in print

It’s an important part of the economy that’s essentially frozen. We’re talking about the housing market — home sales and everything connected to them. The spring selling season, like much of the rest of the economy, has barely moved.

The National Association of Realtors reports that Existing Home Sales, or sales of previously owned homes, were little changed in April compared to March and a year earlier.

Part of the story is that mortgage rates have drifted higher amid inflation concerns and geopolitical uncertainty. There’s also a shortage of available homes for sale, and affordability constraints are a headwind for sales.

I spoke about this with Marketplace Radio, one of my favorite outlets for financial news. Check it out and listen to what I had to say.

Listen: “War in Iran slowed a promising spring housing market” -- Marketplace Radio

Then & Now

May 20, 1862: Free Land

Some 164 years ago this week, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act.

For a $10 filing fee and five years of work, any adult citizen, or nearly anyone intending to become one, could claim 160 acres of public land and own it outright. No mortgage. No down payment.

That is the polar opposite of where most Americans find themselves today, stretched by high prices, elevated mortgage rates, and a housing market that has made ownership feel more like a privilege than a promise.

The Homestead Act was the federal government’s largest wealth transfer in history. Roughly 270 million acres, about 10 percent of the country’s land, passed into the hands of 1.6 million families. Those families built farms, towns, schools, and businesses. They put down roots. They became the backbone of the agricultural economy that has fed the country and much of the world for generations.

Lincoln signed the law while the Civil War was still very much in doubt, a reminder that some leaders try to build the future even in the middle of crisis. (Check out my recent longer read on leadership, focused on Lincoln and George Washington).

A portion of the Homestead Act, signed in the lower right corner by President Lincoln. National Archives and Records Administration

Lincoln’s bet was simple: ownership builds citizens. Free land was not charity. It was infrastructure, the government converting a balance-sheet asset into a generation of property owners with a stake in the country’s future.

The law’s eligibility was broad by the standards of 1862: U.S. citizens, freed slaves, immigrants intending to become naturalized, single women, and people of all races could apply. But there was a significant catch. Black Americans were not recognized as citizens until the Civil Rights Act of 1866, meaning they were effectively locked out for the first three years the law was in effect. And even after that barrier fell, poverty kept most from participating. Few could afford the tools, seed, and supplies needed to survive five hard winters before the deed cleared. The benefits of the Homestead Act were real. So was the gap between who the law promised to include and who got the land for a bargain.

Mark, Actually

What you might have heard, and what’s actually true

The Claim: “The Federal Reserve prints money.”

Actually: The Fed does not print physical currency, and it does not finance the federal government. Two different things tend to get jammed together here and untangling them matters.

First, there’s the cash in your wallet. The bills are technically called Federal Reserve notes, but they are physically manufactured by the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington and Fort Worth, Texas. The Treasury prints them; the Fed distributes them to banks. The Fed is the issuing authority, but not the printer.

Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, DC (photo by Mark Hamrick)

This next part is the one that confuses some people. The Fed can create “money”, or funds, in a different sense. When it buys a U.S. Treasury bond from a bank, it pays for it by adding numbers to that bank’s reserve account at the Fed. No paper changes hands. Those new reserves did not exist a moment earlier. That is what economists mean when they say the Fed creates money or expands its balance sheet, sometimes called quantitative easing or QE for short.

Here is the part that gets lost in the political crossfire: the Fed is not allowed to buy Treasury bonds directly from the federal government. By law, those bonds first have to be sold to private investors, banks, pension funds, and foreign central banks in the open market. The Fed can buy them only on the secondary market, from those investors, as a tool to influence interest rates and credit conditions, not to fund Congress.

That distinction is what separates a modern central bank from the kind of money-printing operations that have wrecked currencies and economies elsewhere. When a central bank starts buying its own government’s debt directly, with no intermediary and no limit, history has not been kind.

Why It Matters: The federal debt is a Congress and White House problem, not a Fed one. Blaming the Fed mistakes the meter reader for the bill.

You Asked

From reader questions and comments

Will Chertoff, Co-Founder at Clerk Chat, asks via LinkedIn:

Q. Why do so many financial products still require phone calls to cancel? Is this deliberate friction -- and what’s the psychology and economics behind it?

A. Will, you’ve put a name to something millions of consumers feel but rarely articulate: the cancel-by-phone requirement isn’t an oversight. It’s a business model.

The academic term is “dark patterns”, design choices engineered to work against the user’s interest. In financial services, the phone-call requirement is among the most durable examples. Companies know that every hold queue, every transfer to a “retention specialist,” is a moment where a meaningful percentage of customers simply give up. The friction is the feature.

The economics here are fairly straightforward. Research on subscription services consistently shows that companies using deliberate cancellation barriers retain measurably more customers than those offering simple online cancellation, not because customers are more satisfied, but because they are more exhausted. Inertia, it turns out, is remarkably profitable.

The psychology runs deeper still. Behavioral economists describe the “sunk cost of effort”, once you’ve spent twenty minutes on hold, abandoning the call feels like a loss. Companies exploit what researchers call completion bias, our hard-wired drive to finish what we’ve started. The hold queue is designed to wear you down. And the old “your call is very important to us” message may be one of the most overused, less-than-honest statements in modern business.

The broader cost is the one you identified precisely, Will: trust. Every consumer who has navigated a labyrinthine cancellation process carries that experience forward. Dark patterns may win a billing cycle. They tend to lose the relationship.

Note: I’m a journalist and economic analyst, not an investment adviser. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

Last Word

“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”

- Herbert Hoover, 1936

The quotation almost sounds too sharp to be real. But Hoover said it nearly 90 years ago, and history, so far, has proven him right.

The debt does not collect itself. It is paid, in part, by the people not at the table when the choices are made. The kindest thing today’s policymakers could do for younger and future generations is to leave them a smaller debt inheritance -- or none at all -- than what Hoover described.

President Herbert Hoover, 1930 (Courtesy: Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum)

Finally, a note of appreciation and an invitation: This effort is meant to be a two-way street. I’m thinking and writing here, of course, but I also want to hear your comments and questions. Please reach out across social media or comment where you have the opportunity. This only works because you are here!

A double dose of unwelcome inflation data dropped this week, and the numbers hit close to home for anyone filling a gas tank, buying groceries, or just trying to get from point A to point B.

The April CPI and PPI reports landed back-to-back, and together they tell a familiar story: prices are rising faster than paychecks, and the pressure isn’t coming from one corner of the economy. It’s everywhere.

Think of it this way: if 2022’s inflation, driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, set the benchmark for painful price spikes, April’s data is giving it a serious run for its money.

What you’re paying at the register (CPI)

Consumer prices rose 0.6% in April alone and 3.8% over the past year. Strip out food and energy, and you’re still looking at 0.4% monthly and 2.8% annually. This isn’t just a gas price story.

• Energy: Up 3.8% in April alone, acting as the primary driver

• Shelter: Costs rose 0.6% over the month

• Airline fares: Jumped 2.8%

• Food: Led by a 2.7% increase in beef and a 1.8% rise in fruits and vegetables

What’s coming down the pipeline (PPI)

Here’s the part that should give everyone pause: wholesale prices surged 1.4% in April and 6.0% over the past year. That’s what businesses are paying, and history says consumers end up paying it eventually.

• Gasoline up 15.6%, diesel up 12.6% at the wholesale level

• Truck freight costs jumped 8.1%, which is the cost of moving virtually everything you buy

• Wholesale machinery and equipment margins climbed 3.5%

Translation: transportation costs are running hot, and consumers are going to be asked to pick up part of the tab.

Paychecks vs. price tags

In April, wages grew 0.2%. Prices grew 0.6%. That’s a three-to-one gap, meaning nearly every dollar of wage growth got swallowed up by the rising cost of living before it could do anything useful.

For lower- and middle-income households, the math gets even harder when real life happens: a car repair, a medical bill, a jump in insurance premiums, or property taxes. Standard inflation metrics often lag those immediate pressures, which means the official numbers can actually understate how stretched people feel.

What the Fed does next

Rate cuts? Don’t hold your breath. With inflation running this hot, the Federal Reserve isn’t going anywhere near lower rates, and incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh is walking into one of the toughest jobs in Washington — and it’s just gotten tougher. Future rate increases can’t be ruled out entirely.

Editor’s Note: I publish The Hamrick Brief every Monday morning. When a subject calls for more depth or a faster turn, I'll send 'A Longer View' or 'The Brief, Briefly' outside that cadence. Just writing that I hope is worth your time.

The Hamrick Brief cuts through the noise on economic and policy news that affects your bottom line. If someone forwarded this to you, consider subscribing.

We welcome comments and questions, and most of all, your readership and support!

A young grocery store worker didn’t need a news report or an economist to tell her AI is affecting employment. But what she may not have known is how fast it’s happening: in the first four months of 2026, companies cited AI in nearly 50,000 announced layoffs.

This week in The Hamrick Brief, we look at the anxiety reshaping the workforce and why the people absorbing the costs rarely end up sharing in the gains. We also travel back 182 years to the invention that rewired the world the last time technology moved faster than society could absorb it. And I share something personal: a Western Union telegram sent to a hospital in Charleston, West Virginia, the day I was born, a reminder that even the most powerful technologies in history ultimately depended on the human touch.

Plus: the truth about Fed rate cuts and mortgage rates. They’re not as connected as you might think. And expert guidance on managing investment risk over the next three years.

The Brief

What AI Is Doing to Work and What Workers Think About It

I was in a grocery store recently when I noticed two young employees talking about Apple’s Siri. Being a journalist by instinct, I stopped and asked: What do you think about artificial intelligence? One of them answered without hesitation. It isn’t good for the environment, she said, and it’s taking lots of jobs away.

Her concerns are shared by many, and the numbers back her up.

According to Monster’s 2026 Graduate AI Readiness Report, 89 percent of recent and soon-to-be graduates worry that AI or automation will replace entry-level jobs. That figure was 64 percent just a year ago, a 25-point jump in 12 months. More than half say they feel anxious about using AI tools in their future workplaces. These are not vague fears about a distant future. These are the concerns of people entering the labor market.

The actions of some employers suggest some concern is warranted. Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks announced job cuts, confirmed that companies cited AI as a reason for 49,135 layoff announcements in the first four months of 2026 alone, roughly 16 percent of total cuts year to date. In April, AI was the leading cause of layoffs for the second consecutive month, with 21,490 positions announced in a single month, accounting for roughly 26 percent of all cuts that month. The pace is accelerating.

The environmental concern she raised also has data behind it, pun intended. Data centers consume water for cooling and electricity at a scale that has sparked serious debate about grid capacity and carbon emissions in states where large facilities are concentrated.

The investment numbers tell you where this is headed. The five largest AI and cloud infrastructure companies, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle, have collectively committed somewhere between $660 billion and $690 billion in capital expenditures for 2026 alone. About three-quarters of that, roughly $450 to $500 billion, goes toward AI-related infrastructure. For context, that is more than the annual GDP of most countries. Companies do not make bets of that size without expecting returns, and those returns depend on AI replacing tasks that humans currently perform.

None of this is an argument that AI is only destructive, or that some benefits won’t reach workers and society over time. Productivity gains from new technology have historically raised living standards, though not without disruption, and not always for the same people who absorbed the costs first. Both things can be true at once.

One thing is for sure. In the current political environment in Washington, elected officials are going to be slow to respond, if they respond at all. We saw that years ago with global trade agreements that displaced many hard-working Americans. It gave consumers cheaper products made overseas, but threw American manufacturing employees out of work, devastating places like my beloved hometown of Coffeyville, Kansas. The same elected officials who supported those agreements failed to help many of the people displaced by them.

Is history repeating itself, or will politicians help protect against some of the downsides? Should AI or robots be taxed to help fund a government response, protecting against negative, unintended consequences? There are indications that such a discussion is beginning to emerge.

What the young woman in the grocery store understood, intuitively, is that the promise and the disruption don’t arrive on the same schedule. The investment is happening now. The benefits for workers broadly, or the hope of a level playing field, may take considerably longer.

Then & Now:

May 24, 1844 The First Telegraph Message

Nearly 182 years ago, the words Samuel Morse sent from the U.S. Capitol to a railway station in Baltimore on May 24, 1844, were borrowed from the Bible: “What hath God wrought.” He was asking a question that every transformative technology raises, and rarely answers quickly.

Before that wire, the speed of information was the speed of physical transport. A letter traveled as fast as a horse. The electric telegraph broke that limit entirely, the first technology in history to move a message faster than any human or vehicle could carry it.

The disruption was immediate. The Pony Express, which had operated for 19 months carrying mail by relay riders between Missouri and California, shut down two days after the transcontinental telegraph was completed in 1861. Financial markets were transformed almost overnight: the stock ticker, a direct adaptation of telegraph technology, was delivering real-time prices to brokerages across Manhattan by 1867. By 1910, two-thirds of all U.S. stock trades ran through the New York Stock Exchange, in large part because the telegraph had made a national market possible.

The profession the telegraph created was the information worker of its era. At its zenith, there were more than 200,000 operators across roughly 20,000 offices. It was skilled, relatively well-paid work, and for a generation, one of the most accessible paths into the white-collar workforce. Then the telephone arrived. Then radio, television, and the Internet. Western Union sent its last telegram in 2006, although telegrams can still be sent today, as I was recently surprised and a bit delighted to learn.

The workers who built the telegraph infrastructure and those whose livelihoods it eliminated were rarely the same people. The investment came first, and disruption followed. The benefits took longer still, and they didn’t reach everyone equally.

Personal File: A Telegram from “Pappy”

The Western Union form in the photograph I’m sharing here is dated October 4, 1960. It was sent from Wallace, West Virginia, a small community in the north-central part of the state, to a woman named Judy Hamrick at a hospital in Charleston, roughly 90 miles away. The sender identified himself only as “Dad.” The message, typed in all-caps that telegraph operators used, reads: “CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU AND THE LITTLE BOY HOPE BOTH ARE DOING WELL.” I guess I didn’t have a name at that point, or at least he didn’t know it.

That little boy was me.

My maternal grandfather, M.T. Hill, was a school principal in Wallace. We called him Pappy. When I was born, he went to the Western Union office and paid to have a message transmitted by wire. The technology that Samuel Morse demonstrated 116 years earlier, the same system that had outpaced the Pony Express and remade American finance, was still one of the fastest ways a proud grandfather in the mountains of north-central West Virginia could reach his daughter in a hospital 90 miles away.

Look closely at the bottom of the telegram, and you can see the delivery notes. Western Union tried to phone first. The number wasn’t in the city directory. They tried several exchanges, all marked “not there.” They eventually delivered it to the hospital, where my mother was recovering after what she told me was a difficult delivery. Full disclosure: She could be dramatic at times.

The message traveled immediately from Wallace to Charleston. It turns out that finding the recipient took considerably longer, as the document tells us upon examination. A lesson for the present: It still took a human touch to complete.

I was pleased recently to join consumer reporter Susan Hogan for the debut episode of Susan Makes ⓢense, a new personal finance streaming series from NBC4 Washington. I was honored to be the first guest with such an experienced and trusted consumer expert as Susan. We spent nearly half an hour discussing credit cards, how minimum payments could keep you stuck for years, and one word that can lower your interest rate, as well as the smartest strategies for attacking high-interest debt. (Hint: Avalanche and Snowball Methods).

If you or someone you know is carrying a balance or struggling with this potentially costly form of debt, this one is worth your time. Please take a look and share with someone if they need a helping hand with credit card debt.

Watch the full interview here.

Mark, Actually

What you might have heard, and what’s actually true.

The Claim: “When the Fed cuts rates, mortgage rates fall.”

Actually: The Fed controls the federal funds rate, an overnight bank lending rate, aka, a short-term rate. Mortgage rates, particularly the 30-year fixed, track the 10-year Treasury yield, which moves on inflation expectations and bond market sentiment, not Fed decisions alone. So, one side of the equation is short-term, the other is long-term.

Why It Matters: Timing matters, but perfectly timing markets is difficult. Buyers who wait for Fed rate cuts to get a better mortgage rate may be waiting for the wrong signal entirely, or get burned if rates rise.

You Asked

This week, I turn to Kimberly Forrest, Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Bokeh Capital Partners, for an answer to one of your questions. I’ve worked with Kim for years, as a participant in one of our professional investor surveys and appeared with her on television during an interview.

Q. Given the current market and economic conditions, what’s a smart strategy for diversifying investments while managing risk over the next three years? – Pamela, Maryland

A. Pamela, Congratulations on being an investor! The world of investing is wide and has many options, but I am someone who tries to keep it simple.

We always encourage investors to keep focused on the long term. Markets are essentially people putting their money to work in ways that reflect their beliefs about the future, so the markets are always forward-looking. Your time frame, 3 years, is on the short side of our investing time line – 3-5 years. It’s enough time to allow companies to improve their processes and products and hopefully increase shareholder returns.

Given your age and timeline, I am going to suggest you have a stock portfolio, rather than another kind of product. Yes, you will have to do some work to build and maintain the portfolio, but it should give you control over where your money is being put to work.

Your question is about managing risk given the current market and economic conditions: The funny thing about this endeavor is that we never know what the future may bring, and we are not really sure about what the economy is doing right now. Know these things are only found in hindsight. Our advice is to have a small set of assumptions and make your investments based on what you think is most likely to happen. I am older than you, so my assumptions are sort of vague. I know what I think would be the best events that can happen and the worst events, but these generally never come to pass. So, I assume that a mix of good and bad is likely. Interest rates matter to investors, and from my view, they are likely to go lower rather than higher. This is likely the key assumption.

I like to have a diversified portfolio that has sector weightings that mirror the S&P 500 sectors. Studies have shown that a portfolio is diversified if it has 20 or more holdings. 20 seems a bit low to me – the math says you would have initial positions of about 5%. I like to have more stocks than this, so let’s use my favorite – 3% positions, which means 33 or so positions.

Next, I would have about half of the stocks in large cap, again approximating the S&P 500 sector weightings. And I would have about half the portfolio in mid-cap, high-quality stocks. Why? Higher-quality small companies have a tendency to grow and/or be acquired by larger companies.

We don’t like to have products that buffer for the downside, as that protection can be expensive and, it’s better to give your portfolio every opportunity to grow. If there is a market downturn, it’s likely that you will have plenty of time to let the market return to growth before you need the proceeds of the portfolio.

Many books can help you navigate evaluating stocks, but I also think that most people understand what a good company looks like, so I would start my search by looking at companies that you like dealing with. Then, look at a site like Yahoo Finance for specific information about a stock’s financial metrics. It’s important for the companies you pick to have relatively low debt and a track record of growth. Most of the data that you need to determine this is freely available.

I think if you start slowly building out your portfolio, you will find this process fun and rewarding.

-Kimberly Forrest, Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Bokeh Capital Partners, Pittsburgh, PA

Note: I’m a journalist and economic analyst, not an investment adviser. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.

Last Word

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”- Benjamin Franklin

Beginning in the 1730s, Benjamin Franklin, better known to many Americans as a Founding Father, diplomat, inventor, and printer, published Poor Richard’s Almanack, a small annual publication filled with observations, humor, and practical advice about work, money, habits, and everyday life. Its sayings and wisdom became widely known in early America and are still associated with Franklin centuries later.

I first encountered Poor Richard’s Almanack as a child through a book featuring a collection of Franklin’s sayings, and I still have my original copy. What stayed with me was his ability to explain important truths simply and clearly, often in just a sentence or two. What a remarkable man he was.

Which is why I’m uncomfortable about a recurring question: Where are the great leaders today?

I’m talking about people who prioritize service above self. The kind that history demands and elevates.

As a president and long-time active member of the National Press Club, I had the privilege of arranging visits and hosting leaders from the business and entertainment worlds, as well as domestic and foreign governments. I got to see and learn things in those settings that don’t make it into the coverage, including how people act when they aren’t in front of a camera. Some inspired, some disappointed.

Amid the many problems we have in our world and the nation today, we needed great leadership yesterday. History does offer some reassurance that the greatest leaders often emerge during periods of genuine crisis. For me, two figures stand out in American history.

George Washington was, of course, a military leader of extraordinary consequence, holding together the Continental Army with the odds against it. But what distinguishes Washington in a timeless way is what he did with power once he had it. He understood that for the American experiment to survive, the presidency needed limits. Though he possessed enormous authority and public trust, he exercised restraint, setting a precedent that power in America would have a time limit and be accountable.

As an aside, my own fourth great-grandfather, Benjamin(e) Hamrick, served under George Washington in the Revolution, fighting at Trenton and Princeton and wintering at Valley Forge before helping build a life in what would become West Virginia. What I would give to have been able to hear from him what that experience was like, and his own observations about Washington.

My relative, Revolutionary War soldier Benjamin(e) Hamrick’s grave in West Virginia, courtesy of Sara Hamrick Prebble via Facebook, and his signature from a document for the application of a military pension, 1832

Another American hero, Abraham Lincoln understood something equally important for history. He did not enter the Civil War with illusions about its cost. He knew that preserving the Union would require sacrifice on a scale the country had not yet known. As a leader, he carried that weight without flinching. Lincoln did not survive to see the full arc of what he set in motion. What he left behind was a nation, imperfect and wounded, but intact.

Both men embodied something, I think, that a Harvard Business Review piece by organizational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic identifies. His argument, adapted from his book Don’t Be Yourself, challenges the modern tendency to equate authenticity with saying whatever comes to mind, as though unfiltered expression alone were a measure of leadership.

He argues that disciplined self-awareness and emotional control, not simply raw self-expression, are often what make leaders effective and ultimately perceived as authentic.

At issue also is the difference between leaders drawn to power and those devoted to service. Politics and other key pursuits have always attracted both. Narcissism and leadership ability are not mutually exclusive. History offers uncomfortable proof of this. What separates the leaders we celebrate from those who don’t ascend is whether the hunger for power gravitates toward the common good or feeds upon itself.

Confidence without empathy risks becoming abusive or destined for failure. Empathy without confidence risks stumbling or stopping.

In my own life, both personally and professionally, I've tried, not always successfully, to strike that balance, to create space for others to bring their best selves and ideas forward.

What makes this moment different? Social media, for one. The very media environment that could be elevating serious leaders rewards exactly the behaviors that aren’t consistent with Washington and Lincoln’s examples: the unfiltered post, speech, or action, public emotional impulses. They might be authentic but can be seen as volatile or personality flaws. Credibility that can take years to build can be destroyed in a single speech, action, or news cycle.

Washington and Lincoln didn’t have social media. And that’s probably a good thing. They enjoyed the slower-moving judgment of history. Perhaps that’s what made the difference.

And this isn’t only a supply problem. It’s also a demand problem. What are the American people actually demanding of leaders? Seriousness, restraint, service? Or volume, certainty, and entertainment? There are great leaders among us right now, in business, in the military, and yes, in politics, too. They are not always in the positions where they could have the largest impact, and that gap is at least partly a reflection of what we’ve collectively rewarded.

I do believe the leaders we need are likely already among us. History suggests some balance between patience and urgency. But the longer this vacuum persists, the more damage accumulates, and even the best leadership could struggle to repair it.

We are overdue.

I publish The Hamrick Brief every Monday morning. When a subject calls for more depth or a faster turn, I’ll send “A Longer View” or “The Brief, Briefly” outside that cadence. Just some words, with occasional numbers thrown in, that I hope are worth your time. Please send your questions or comments.

This week, the most-watched transition in corporate America moves a step closer. Apple’s Tim Cook, who inherited the world’s most celebrated company and somehow made it worth four times more, will hand the keys to John Ternus this fall. Cook leaves behind staggering numbers and an open question: what, exactly, is Apple’s AI strategy? First movers don’t always win --Apple has proven that repeatedly -- but the window for a defining move is open, and Ternus will be the one to make it.

Elsewhere in this edition: a World’s Fair from 1939 that tried to sell the future four months before the world went to war, and what that moment says about today’s AI optimism. A conversation I have never forgotten, with a journalist who came to Washington from Pakistan and asked me to remember his name, just in case. And a reality check on homeownership that should reframe what “saving for a down payment” means.

The economy does not pause for transitions. Neither do we.

The Brief

Apple’s Big CEO Handoff

Apple has done this once before. The stakes are higher now.

On September 1, John Ternus will become the eighth CEO in Apple’s history, succeeding Tim Cook, who took over from Steve Jobs in 2011 shortly before Jobs’ death. Ternus, 50, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering and a 25-year company veteran, is already in the spotlight now, and the intensity will only grow. Cook moves to executive chairman.

The value of the enterprise that Cook is handing over is staggering. Apple’s market capitalization grew from roughly $350 billion when he took the reins to more than $4 trillion today, a figure that rose further after the company posted a positive earnings surprise on April 30. To put it in perspective, that’s a gain of more than $3.5 trillion in shareholder value. Revenue nearly quadrupled, from $108 billion in fiscal year 2011 to more than $416 billion in fiscal year 2025. Apple retired close to 40 percent of its shares through the largest buyback program in corporate history and returned more than $900 billion to shareholders through dividends and repurchases combined.

I have been reading David Pogue’s bestselling book “Apple: The First 50 Years”, a testament to what Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and their colleagues built: a company that changed the way human beings interact with technology, not once but several times over. Cook’s Apple did not produce another iPhone. Few companies ever change the world once, let alone multiple times. In my view, Cook’s tenure was more transformative for investors than for consumers. The products were excellent, and admittedly, I’m a big user and a fan. The launches became more incremental. The wealth created was real and vast.

What Cook is not handing over is a clear or well-understood answer to a consequential question in consumer technology: what is Apple’s AI strategy?

Apple has, by the standards of its megacap peers, largely sat out the first wave of the AI buildout. While Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta have committed hundreds of billions in combined annual capital expenditures on AI infrastructure, Apple has avoided that level of investment. Its consumer-facing AI features have lagged. Siri required a partnership with Google to become more conversational and capable. For Ternus, a hardware engineer by background, the central challenge is not a hardware problem. Whether he can reorient a company of this scale around software intelligence, in a competitive environment moving faster than any Apple has navigated before, is an early defining question of his tenure.

Ternus has an opportunity to reignite consumer and investor enthusiasm around its product line. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple has six major new product categories in development, including smart glasses, a pendant wearable, a smart home display, a tabletop robot, and a security camera – along with a long-awaited foldable iPhone expected to debut this fall. A major Siri overhaul is also reportedly in the works.

Then & Now

The World of Tomorrow, Interrupted

Some 87 years ago, on April 30, 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt opened the New York World’s Fair with a simple declaration: “I hereby dedicate the World’s Fair.” It was the first World’s Fair address ever broadcast on television, fitting, since the theme of the entire event was “The World of Tomorrow.”

The 1939 Fair was an exercise in deliberate optimism, arriving ten years into the Great Depression with a message that the future was still worth imagining. General Motors’ Futurama exhibit drew the longest lines of anything at the Fair, carrying visitors through a scale model of America in 1960: interstate highways, automated cities, and abundant consumer goods. Nearly 45 million people attended over two seasons. They came, many of them, because they needed to believe things would get better.

What the Fair’s architects could not know was that the world of tomorrow they were selling would be interrupted almost immediately. Germany invaded Poland four months after opening day. By the time the Fair closed in 1940, Europe was at war, and the optimism on display at Flushing Meadows had taken on a different cast.

The economic lesson isn’t that the forecasters were naive. It’s that every generation builds its vision of the future against a backdrop it cannot fully see. Today’s equivalents, the confident projections of AI-driven abundance, automated productivity, frictionless markets, and heightened geopolitical risk, carry their own potential blind spots. The future is still worth imagining. The eventual, real way that history unfolds will always include surprises.

Personal File

When Press Freedom Comes Home

May 3, World Press Freedom Day, carries special meaning for me. For most people, it passes unmarked, somewhere between a calendar footnote and a distant cause. The concern of journalists in authoritarian countries has not traditionally been widely seen as something with bearing on daily American life.

I know differently. And I have a journalist from Pakistan to cite as evidence.

In 2011, I had the privilege of hosting the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington. It was, as UNESCO’s Director-General confirmed that day, the first time the global event had been held in the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova both lent the occasion their full weight. The 2011 prize went to Ahmad Zeidabadi, an Iranian journalist of extraordinary courage, working under conditions most of us cannot imagine.

But what I remember most isn’t the podium or the prize. It is a conversation I had with a journalist who had traveled to Washington from Pakistan, where practicing journalism carries genuine physical risk. He sought me out and said, simply: I want to meet you so that in case something bad happens to me, you’ll know who I am.

I have never forgotten it. That heartfelt admission reframed everything. He wasn’t asking for sympathy. He was asking for a witness and an ally within the relatively safe sanctuary of the United States.

Mark (wearing gifts of traditional garb), with visiting Pakistani journalists at the National Press Club, 2011

It is easy, in the daily work of economic analysis and financial commentary, to treat press freedom as someone else’s issue. It is not. Free markets require free, credible, trusted information. Price discovery, corporate accountability, the exposure of fraud, and the scrutiny of fiscal policy. None of it functions without journalists who can report without fear. The economic cost of suppressed press freedom is not theoretical. It shows up in corruption, in misallocated capital, in governments that spend without accountability because no one is permitted to say so clearly.

World Press Freedom Day is not just a moment to honor courage abroad. It is a call to defend what we have at home, support the news organizations doing the hard work, and remember the people around the world who are paying every day to preserve something we too easily take for granted. Bear witness. It matters.

Mark, Actually

What you might have heard, and what’s actually true.

The Claim: “You need 20% down to buy a home.”

Actually: Most first-time buyers put down significantly less. FHA loans require as little as 3.5%, and several conventional programs allow 3%. The 20% threshold eliminates private mortgage insurance.

According to the National Association of Realtors, the median down payment for first-time buyers in 2025 was about 9 percent. On a $415,000 home -- roughly the national median -- that comes to around $37,000. A real hurdle. But not the $83,000 that 20 percent would demand.

Why It Matters: Waiting to hit 20% can cost buyers years of equity-building while rents and prices keep moving.

You Asked

Fadi Butti, via LinkedIn, asks: I wonder if the data looks the same for luxury or upscale homes in the $800,000-and-above range versus the median market. Do trends differ for that pricier segment?

Your instinct is right, Fadi, and it matters. The housing market is currently running as two largely separate stories.

The median market, where most buyers depend on a 30-year fixed mortgage, remains under pressure. Elevated rates and prices have kept many would-be buyers on the sidelines or locked into existing homes they cannot afford to leave.

The $800,000-and-above segment is moving differently. Buyers in this tier are often insulated from rate sensitivity. They bring significant equity, liquid assets, or cash. Nationally, roughly 31 percent of all home transactions now involve no mortgage at all, a figure that runs considerably higher in the luxury segment and higher still at the top of the market. Luxury home prices rose more than 5 percent year-over-year through late 2025, while the broader market barely moved. Sales volumes in the upper tier have held up or grown, while the middle of the market has stalled.

The short answer: it is not the same market, and it is not the same crowd. Wealth insulates. Rate sensitivity is more of an issue for middle and lower-wealth individuals. This is one of the many such divides in the current economy that is most telling.

(Note: I’m a journalist and an economic analyst, not an investment adviser. Anything I write reflects my analysis and the views of the experts I trust, not personalized financial advice. For decisions specific to your situation, please consult a fiduciary.)

Last Word

“Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” -- Benjamin Franklin

Founding Father Franklin was writing about household budgets, and the advice holds as well today as it did in the 18th century. Small costs (subscriptions, fees, and impulse purchases) rarely feel significant in the moment. They can add up quietly, potentially overwhelming us at some future breaking point.