What’s happening in the economy today …
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported a complex economic landscape showing that real GDP growth accelerated to an annual rate of 1.6% in Q1 2026 (revised down from the 2.0% advance estimate), while consumer spending remained hot as the annual PCE inflation rate accelerated to 3.8% in April 2026. Another release from the BEA today, showed corporate profits, which slowed to 0.9% growth in Q1 2026, and April personal income, which was effectively flat (decreasing less than $0.1 billion).
- GDP (First Quarter 2026, Second Estimate): Real GDP grew at 1.6%, which is a clear acceleration from the 0.5% pace at the end of 2025. However, the downward revision from 2.0% shows that consumer spending and private investment were softer than initially thought.
- Personal Income & Outlays (April 2026): Personal income was flat, and disposable income dropped by 0.1% ($19.9 billion). Yet, nominal consumer spending (PCE) rose by 0.5%. Because spending outpaced income, the personal saving rate plunged to 2.6%, its lowest level in over a year.
- Inflation (April 2026 PCE): The headline Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index rose 0.4% month-over-month and 3.8% year-over-year (up from 3.5% in March). Core PCE (excluding food and energy) rose 0.2% monthly and 3.3% annually.
- Corporate Profits (First Quarter 2026): Corporate profits grew by a meager 0.9%, a sharp deceleration from the 6.0% expansion seen in the final quarter of 2025, signaling tightening corporate margins. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The economy is locked in a stagflationary tug-of-war. Growth is technically accelerating compared to late 2025, but it is heavily supported by mechanical factors like government spending and tech-driven intellectual property investments. The primary concern for the macroeconomy is persistent inflation driven by recent energy shocks. With inflation heading away from the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, the economy faces a prolonged period of high interest rates, raising the risk of an economic slowdown later in the year. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The American consumer is financially squeezed and burning through safety nets. [1, 2]
- Negative Real Wages: While nominal wages are growing, they are failing to keep pace with the 3.8% inflation rate. In fact, when adjusted for inflation, real disposable income per capita fell 0.5% in April.
- Depleted Savings: To maintain their standard of living against rising costs, consumers are drawing down on their savings. The drop in the saving rate to 2.6% highlights that current spending patterns are unsustainable without stronger income growth. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Mortgage rates to remain higher for longer, hovering near recent peaks. The Federal Reserve relies on the PCE index as its primary inflation gauge. Because headline PCE accelerated to 3.8% and core quarterly PCE is running hot, financial markets have entirely priced out near-term Fed rate cuts. Mortgage rates closely track the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which will stay elevated as long as inflation forces the Fed to keep its benchmark rate at 3.5%–3.75%. For homebuyers, this means affordability pressures will not ease anytime soon. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] Likewise, financing a vehicle will liekly remain expensive. Auto loans are heavily influenced by the short-term interest rates controlled by the Fed. Since the flat income data and sticky inflation eliminate any justification for the Fed to ease monetary policy, banks will maintain high prime lending rates. Consumers looking to purchase a car will face high monthly payments, strict credit qualifications, and elevated financing charges through the summer. [1, 2]
Thursday, third gear, a lean right ⚙️
On the SuperDuty it does the shifting for me unless I hit the button on gear shift lever. I am bringing my rain coat today to work, not because I think it will rain even though there are showers around, but the rain coat is a certain way to ward off the rain. Been listening to a lot of Grateful Dead, thinking of those days on summer vacation smoking and giggling at those lyrics. A Friend of the Devil is a Friend of Mine.
Went to the store last night, loaded up the bike with milk, eggs, flour, frozen strawberries and especially apple cider vinegar and road home. 🛒 They didn’t have the ACV the other day, and I find it hard to enjoy water without it. Plus I needed as much water as possible, along with fruits and vegetables to recover from that night of hard drinking and hot dogs at picnic. 🤧 But it’s so unsafe to ride your bike home drunk, but it was fun and I didn’t get a DWI or wreck my SuperDuty. I was completely out of eggs, 🥚 I could have lived without the frozen strawberries, though they are a nice treat. 🍓 I would get fresh but frozen means less packaging. I usually get fresh when I go camping, as it’s a nice snack for a change, and it’s not like I don’t have fires up when I’m in the woods so the extra packaging doesn’t matter. Plus keeping things frozen isn’t a thing camping. 🔥
Got home and noticed there was bugs in the spilled cornmeal and flour in the cabinet, so I cleaned that out and scrubbed it down well, didn’t see any bugs in the remaining open bags themselves, 🪲 so I put them in the fridge and they seem okay this morning, what’s a little extra protein. I made up extra pancakes to cook off the rest of the flour as I have that new unopened bag. I’ll just put the extra pancakes in the fridge. 🥞 And cleaned some parts of the kitchen. Bunch more of the door fell apart on my apartment last night, but I pull off more of the rotten wood, and it’s back working again. 🚪 But I tell myself, I could have bought that house next to my parents house, for less then $150k it was offered at as it sold for $130k, put a bit more money into and paid no rent. But I kind of like living in city. And in a few years when I loose my parents, maybe I’ll put in a bid to buy their house from the estate, or maybe I won’t. 🛖 I don’t know, for now I kind of like looking at the city, even if I am poor desprate renter whose door is literally rotting off the hinges and I have bugs in my pancakee flour. I kind of want something simple when I retire, that basic off-grid hunting cabin style residence. 🐐 Maybe I can have hogs and goats out in Westerlo, but it’s still a bit too built up to be burning a lot of plasticky stuff or shooting a lot of guns. Fucking New York, it’s all so built up as plenty of off-gridders in more wild states burn or bury everything with zero issues. 🛢️ Household trash isn’t nuclear waste. ⚛️
After cleaning up the bugs and kitchen, I found some where I had stashed those cans of PBR from last autumn, 🍻 that apparently won’t stolen by High Schoolers despite my extreme paranoia from the big of the SuperDuty. Sat out back for a while in the dark, didn’t drink any of the beer, 🌆 but before then I went to Five Rivers for a while on the bike. Still shifting and riding really good. 🚲 That sheep shit that Lyman Farms was spreading was pungent. 🐑 And I want to coat the bottom of my truck with lamolin. Read more of the book about bird conservation, looked at the wildflowers, ended up listening to some music, a podcast, and walking around a bit before riding home in the darkness. Not a bad evening, too bad the rest of the week looks to be cooler and maybe cloudy and raining tomorrow evening. Still hoping to ride both ways today. 😶🌫️
I think the blog tuning is going better, not sure if there is much I can fix beyond I have done enabling caching and opt-caching and fixing things. Most of the overhead is now just the core WordPress and not my queries, and I got rid of a lot of old posts and drafts. 🖥️ Using a lot more plug-ins and industry standards, SEO stuff, trying to get away from stuff I coded myself but maybe not the best stuff. But what really is making a difference it seems is cutting back the Maximum Execution Time for PHP from 60 seconds down to 5 seconds – there are few random calls the crawlers keep making on the blog, chewing up all of the threads I have, taking down the blog or slowing down things for other users. I am not sure if intentional DDOS or the web host is having capacity problems, but it sure seems like everything is running slower then it did in the past, despite all my efforts to cache and optimize. On the other hand, sometimes some pages are loading much faster. 🐇 Google says I still have a slow site, but whatever, I like it, and I will do what makes me happy. Some months Google Ad Revenue is better then others, but over the year, it’s still bringing in $1,000+ a year minus $300 or so a year for the cost of hosting and domains. All for my rants about the world of SuperDuty trucks, off-grid cabins, stinky ol’ burn barrels and little towns that smell like cow shit. 💩 I think some of it just is ad markets have changed and slowed down a bit, I was getting a lot of traffic for NY and PA School District Maps but those budgets are now done, so that traffic has dropped. 📉
Hopefully at this time next week, I will have the truck cap. 🚛 I don’t want to be a pain but I should call Andy Ruth up on Friday to see if he has any updates, as I’d like to know I can take delivery of the truck cap shortly after I move the money. This weekend I thought about camping, and indeed I have my hammock but I realized all the blankets are still in my old truck, so I guess I won’t be camping this weekend, ⛺ unless I swing by my parents house and get it out of Big Red. Whatever, it’s still going to be fairly buggy. I still need to order that relay box I want to use when wiring up the truck cap, along with deciding what dash cam I want to get to capture my trips. A lot of people want dash cams for safety, I just want one so I keep a record of my trips, capturing interesting and scenic parts to post to Youtube. 📽️ But it’s also good if I got into a creash or got pulled over on the road for documentation. Video does keep people honest. Oil prices ⛽ are back up, I guess Trump’s Iran War 🇮🇷 isn’t over, he just decided to declare victory 🏆 over the weekend until reality set in, which always does. Delusions can only last so long when you’re the nation’s leader.
I think the Nature Bus 🚏 is going to Five Rivers this weekend, so that ain’t an option to take to Thacher Park this weekend. I could obviously take the SuperDuty to Thacher Park if I wanted but not really. I’ll probably just ride somewhere this weekend on the bike, 🚲 hang out. Sunday I’ll hike in one of the local preserves, maybe Hannacroix Ravine again would be cool. 😎 Hoping the following weekend to be able to work on wiring up my truck, and depending on what dad wants to do, the Gas Up Tractor Festival 🚜 in Gallupville during Dad’s Day Weekend. And then maybe take off June 18th before the Juneteenth Weekend (Juneteenth is on a Friday), and head up to Piseco-Powley Road. Or maybe Speculator first for two nights then drive down to the Potholers. A lot depends on the weather. It be fun to float in the East Canada Creek on a tube, have a big fire. 🔥 Make sure it’s remote in case anything smelly goes up into smoke, lol. The Cannabis should cover the smell in my mind. I don’t know, I also want to do Burnt Rossman and Betty Brook but that might wait until later in the month, then I can hike Bromley Fire Tower 🗼 like on a Friday, ride the Catskill Scenic Trail 🚵♂️ and then swim at Mine Kill. 🏊♂️ Or float on Schoharie Creek. And visit the farm stands for fresh strawberries. 🍓 Summer is ahead!
Ford’s Stock Is Surging—and It’s Got Nothing to Do With Its Car Business – WSJ
Ford Motor’s F 3.66%increase; green up pointing triangle stock price has surged to its highest level in nearly three years, and the reason has little to do with cars or trucks.
Over the past two weeks, Ford stock has risen 28% after the company announced a new energy-storage subsidiary, Ford Energy.
That division, which launched with a $2 billion investment, seeks to turn batteries once destined for electric vehicles into stationary energy-storage systems for artificial-intelligence data centers, power utilities and large industrial customers. The move puts Ford in competition with other major battery-making companies such as Tesla and LG Energy Solution.
Eating healthy, basic foods gets you more value when shopping
I was grocery shopping earlier this evening, thinking about the things I typically buy – basic ingredients like flour, eggs, milk, bananas, frozen strawberries, frozen fruits and vegetables. Both quite nutrious and affordable, they are items that have some of thinnest profit margins:
- Milk and Eggs: These are the most common loss leaders and are frequently sold with little to no profit. For instance, a dozen Grade A large eggs saw a price decline of 16.6% between 2024 and 2026, costing roughly $2.50 in early 2026.
- Bananas: These are widely considered one of the healthiest and cheapest foods with very low markups; stores rarely make a significant profit on them.
- Grains and Pasta: Items like rice, dried pasta, and flour typically fall into the low-margin category (roughly 30%–40%) because retailers rely on high volume and fast turnover for these staples. In 2026, the price for a pound of spaghetti or macaroni averaged around $1.32.
- Canned Goods: Standard canned vegetables and shelf-stable proteins like canned tuna generally have low profit margins compared to fresh or prepared foods. Canned tuna prices saw a 3% decrease in early 2026
- Shopping the Perimeter: The lowest-margin products like dairy, meat, and basic produce are typically found on the store’s perimeter, whereas more heavily processed items with higher markups are located in the middle aisles.
- Bulk Purchases: Buying large quantities of staples like rice (e.g., 20-pound bags) remains one of the most effective ways to lock in lower prices.