Beau

Year-ahead inflation expectations surged from 3.8% in March to 4.8% this month, the largest one-month increase since April 2025.

April, of course, was when Trump launched his Liberation Day tariffs that really only succeeded in liberating money from the pockets of the American working class.

Now, this is clearly tied to Trump's Iran war, which may or may not be coming to a close.

Either way, the problem is that even if everything was resolved today, the mess in the Strait will take weeks, if not months, to straighten out.

The economic impact won't just disappear when and if a peace agreement is actually reached.

Most of the economic anxiety is fed by elevated gas prices.

Like the saying goes, gas prices go up like a rocket and come down like a feather.

Trump keeps saying that gas prices will come down soon, but his own Energy Information Administration, that's part of the Department of Energy, said, The average before Trump started this nonsense was less than $3.00.

Anyway, it's just a thought.

Y'all have a good day.

Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Belle again.

So today, we're going to talk about Trump, madman theory, and the search for reason.

To explain Trump's apparent bumbling about on the foreign policy stage that consistently seems to undermine his own objectives, those seeking to defend his actions on the international scene have latched on to an explanation for his behavior.

Madman Theory It's pretty clear that many of those offering this as an explanation are not really familiar with it, nor familiar with the historical examples.

If they were, they probably wouldn't be suggesting it as a defense.

So what is Madman Theory?

It's a foreign policy theory that suggests it is advisable to make the world think you're a volatile, irrational, emotional, and belligerent person, and therefore you're so unpredictable, it's best to just leave you alone or give you concessions when the time comes.

The rhetoric says that Trump said all of that stuff about eliminating a civilization and so on because he's trying to be a madman.

He's not really so unbalanced that the 25th Amendment should be on the table.

Cool.