Inflation has surged to its highest level in more than three years since the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran, triggering a surge in gasoline prices.
President Trump said the U.S. is seizing "millions" of barrels of Iranian oil in the dead of night, and said inflation will come down when the war ends.
President Donald Trump insisted he loves inflation caused by his war in Iran and claimed he tanked the stock market on purpose.The 79-year-old president spoke to reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office, where he was asked about year-over-year inflation hitting a three-year high of 4.2 percent last month as his war pushed energy prices higher, and he claimed that was part of his broader strategy for launching the attack in the first place."No, I love it – the numbers were great," Trump said. "You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know, I can say it now, something you didn't know. You know, we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil, nobody knows it. You know who doesn't know about it? Iran, until right now we took out the other night 22 ships late at night with no lights because they don't have any radar because we blasted the crap out of it. We took out, that's why oil is $85 a barrel."Trump said he met with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Todd Blanche and other administration officials to discuss the risks of the Feb. 28 attack that launched the war, and he claimed they all agreed the cost was worth it."I mean, you take a look – remember when I did this?" Trump said. "I said, look, the one bad thing will be we hit the best economy we've ever hit, and I said to my people, I had Scott, I had Howard, I had Pete, I had all, I had Todd in the room. I said, the one thing we have to do now, we had just hit the highest stock market in history, highest 401ks in history. Everything was going well, and I said, I hate to do this to you guys, but Iran's going to have a nuclear weapon very soon. We have to go and attack.""So we hit him with the B-2 bombers, which took a lot of courage," he added. "It was totally successful. We buried it, very hard to get, but now we had to make the second move, and I said, you know, the bad part is the stock market will go down by little bit – a lot, based on predictions of experts, like 25 percent, and it was worth it to me. It was worth it not to have a nuclear weapon." - YouTube youtu.be
The president also revealed that the US is 'taking out' millions of barrels of oil from Iran, saying Tehran didn't know 'until right now'.
Oil markets are funny things. Headlines scream one direction, but the fundamentals—those stubborn realities of supply, demand, and inventories—have a way of reasserting themselves. That’s exactly what […]
The president added: "You know why? Because as soon as this war is over... it's going to come down like a rock."
In a disturbing escalation of the anti-white racial hatred already on display throughout the Karmelo Anthony murder trial, supporters of the convicted killer swarmed and verbally assaulted Austin Metcalf's family as they left the Collin County Courthouse on Wednesday, after Anthony was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The post SICKENING VIDEO: Evil Mob of Karmelo Anthony Supporters Follow and Harass Grieving Metcalf Family Outside Courthouse After 35-Year Sentence, ‘We Glad Austin’s Dead!’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Every year, the panel overseeing the trust fund for Social Security and Medicare publishes its annual financial report. And every year, its members make clear that the programs’ reserves will be exhausted by the time Gen X retires – meaning they will no longer be able to pay full scheduled benefits by the mid-2030s.While many media outlets cover this news as a one-day story, this year’s report should be seen as a much more ominous warning. The latest projection, released on June 9, 2026, is that the Social Security trust fund will be depleted by 2032, at which point incoming revenue can pay only about 78% of scheduled benefits. For the 1 in 5 Americans who receive Social Security, that means a potential across-the-board benefit cut of roughly 22% unless Congress acts.What makes this year’s warning especially troubling is that the deterioration isn’t driven by a temporary downturn but by deeper demographic and policy changes: Fewer expected births, lower immigration, slower growth in the workforce and reduced future revenue from the taxation of Social Security benefits.The fundamental challenge, though, has been obvious for years. There are too few current and future workers to support the growing number of retirees. And now, there are fresh headwinds that make the math even more daunting. Record debt levels and elevated interest rates are reducing the fiscal resources available for lawmakers to implement solutions, while declining immigration and birth rates mean that the supply of current and future workers is even smaller than previously projected.These pressures don’t mean Social Security will disappear. It will always exist as long as workers and employers pay into the program. But for anyone who expects to retire starting in the early 2030s, the potential for a cut to benefits is real. As a scholar of public finance, I argue that this looming deadline recalls the crisis policymakers faced in the early 1980s. Once again, the issue of reform is about to move from a distant worry to an immediate political problem. And failure to reach a bipartisan compromise will bring both economic pain and political damage. Fresh pressuresIn 1983, President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill struck their historic bipartisan compromise to extend the life of the program by raising taxes and the eligibility age. This time, the challenge will be far harder.To start with, the federal government now carries a much higher debt burden, topping 100% of annual GDP, compared to about 35% in the early 1980s. And the Congressional Budget Office projects large deficits adding to that debt in the coming decades, with the annual budget shortfall rising from US$1.9 trillion in 2026 to $3.1 trillion in 2036 under current tax and spending laws. Public debt is projected to rise to 120% of GDP by 2036, leaving less and less fiscal room to patch Social Security.Servicing that debt is also becoming more expensive. Although the Federal Reserve trimmed interest rates in 2024 and 2025, the cost of borrowing remains elevated as concerns over inflation grow, exacerbated by oil price spikes and the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Markets now expect the Fed to hold rates steady for a while, and some investors are betting it may even raise them later this year.The demographic picture is also unforgiving. Baby boomers continue to retire, Americans are living longer, and birth rates have fallen sharply. Since 2007, the U.S. birth rate has fallen by 23% and has remained below replacement level for years. The result is fewer future workers paying payroll taxes, even as the number of retirees grows. A final factor is immigration. While other aging countries have turned to immigration to shore up public finances and revitalize their labor force, the U.S. has taken the opposite approach. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, net migration to the U.S. is estimated to have fallen by 2.4 million between 2024 and 2026, amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on unauthorized migrants and its efforts to discourage green card applications. The new report referenced these challenges, noting that lower immigration and fertility estimates will have “a negative projected effect on Social Security’s financial status.” It also addressed the effects of the massive policy bill that President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress pushed through in 2025, which among other things cut the income tax that retirees pay on Social Security benefits. The near-term economic changes of that legislation will “have a positive effect,” the report said, but in the longer run it will also weaken the program’s finances.A slow-motion crisisIt’s important to remember that before the 1983 deal was sealed, Social Security was far closer to insolvency than it is today. The program was nearing the point where it could no longer pay full benefits on time.
The annual inflation rate increased to its highest point in three years as the cost of energy and other goods rose due to the Iran war, according to data released by the Department of Labor on Wednesday. The consumer price index (CPI), a popular gauge of inflation, rose 4.2 percent over the past 12 months…