Well, howdy there, Internet people. It's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about inflation going up and deflation as a wish.

The CPI report came out on Wednesday. That's the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation on a broad collection of items.

It's up 4.2% for the year.

That's the highest since the recovery after COVID.

The numbers were in line with expectations.

The report also shows that Trump's unleashing American energy policies and rhetoric is failing miserably.

Gas is up 40 percent. Fuel oil is up 58 percent. And all of that could be attributed to his foreign policy,

not his energy policy. But electricity itself is seeing a yearly inflation

rate of 5.9%. That's not good. So inflation is up as expected. But with all of that, there's

apparently been some people talking about the possibility of deflation, saying

both that it's likely and that it would somehow be good for people. I'd ask that if you've seen an

economist saying this was likely, I'd love the link. But we've gotten enough questions to tell me that somewhere somehow, this idea is taking hold.

In case you're not picking up on my tone, I don't think this is likely without a major shift somewhere.

Deflation is the opposite of inflation.

Prices go down.

And that sounds great, but generally widespread deflation is bad,

as opposed to deflation that occurs in a specific sector because of some breakthrough.

If deflation is widespread, prices go down.

Companies aren't making money. Layoffs and wage

cuts follow. So your purchasing power doesn't really change much. Then, if people think

prices will continue to fall, they delay their purchases, which further reduces what companies

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