UK's Economic Woes

Today’s big concern is inflation. Tomorrow’s will be unemployment
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/04/15/today-big-concern-inflation-tomorrow-unemployment/
Britain’s economic woes are not solely driven by its exposure to surging energy costs. 

Britain is one misstep away from a buyers’ strike in the bond market
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/04/22/we-are-step-away-from-buyers-strike-in-uk-gilts-markets/

Best Cities for New College Grads

The under-the-radar cities where new college grads can get a good job — and even afford to buy a house
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-under-the-radar-cities-where-new-college-grads-can-get-a-good-job-and-even-afford-to-buy-a-house-d750bba8
A new ranking highlights places with more opportunities for college grads. 

Inflation Related Items

An Inflation Time Bomb is Hiding in Home Insurance
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/an-inflation-time-bomb-is-hiding-in-home-insurance-86625.html   

Bad Inflation Reports Are Often Like Cockroaches
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/bad-inflation-reports-are-often-like-cockroaches-86605.html  

‘Tip of the inflation iceberg’: Social Security’s COLA forecast rises to 3.2%
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tip-of-the-inflation-iceberg-social-securitys-cola-forecast-rises-to-3-2-b2b4062b     

Misallocation of Talent and Resources

We Shouldn’t Need Accountants by Annie Lowrey (The Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/tax-day-irs-filing/686805/
This is the case even though Washington could probably do your taxes for you. If you earn a salary or an hourly wage, the Internal Revenue Service already knows how much money you make. It likely knows how much you owe or how big your refund should be too. Nine in 10 households take the standard deduction, making their liability easy to glean from payroll and banking data.
Yet Uncle Sam demands that Americans fire up TurboTax, head to a storefront preparer, hire an accountant, or sit down with a sharp pencil and a strong cup of coffee to get their taxes done each spring. The average filer spends 13 hours on their 1040—a time tax that many of our wealthy peer countries have reduced to a couple of minutes, if that. Prepopulated documents and return-free systems are common everywhere but here. Sweden lets residents file by text. Canada prefills paperwork. Japan sends households a document summarizing their tax contributions. If everything looks copacetic, many workers get to do a blissful nothing. Denmark, Estonia, Spain, and Norway have similarly simple processes. 

Geopolitics and Dollar Dominance

How Trump’s Crypto Push Is Undermining American Power
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/self-defeating-logic-of-trumps-pro-crypto-agenda-by-jayati-ghosh-2026-04
US President Donald Trump’s deregulation of cryptocurrency markets has introduced new financial risks and threatens to undermine the dollar’s global dominance. Russia, Iran, and North Korea have been the biggest beneficiaries, using crypto to evade American sanctions with impunity.
 
Dollar dominance is reinforced by the global oil trade, but the Iran war could give rise to the ‘petroyuan’ as the U.S. security shield weakens
https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/dollar-dominance-reinforced-global-oil-193741704.html 

Thanks to Trump’s war with Iran, the foundations of the US dollar system have come into question
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/04/23/the-gulf-crisis-is-clear-and-present-danger-to-your-wealth/

Global Economic Outlook - April 2026

IMF WEO – April 2026
https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/weo/2026/april/english/ch1.pdf 

US Productivity

The Economy Is Growing, Jobs Aren’t. Why That Might Be OK.
https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/the-economy-is-growing-jobs-arent-why-that-might-be-ok-5c50a535
An unusual divergence between GDP and new jobs shows worker productivity is making up for a slowdown in immigration and the labor force. Artificial intelligence could help.
 
White House Study Says DEI Hurts Productivity
https://www.wsj.com/business/white-house-study-says-dei-hurts-productivity-7f7100a9
The report found that industries that adopted race-based hiring policies in the past decade saw productivity fall, bolstering Trump’s opposition.