I'm John Bachelor. I welcome my good friend and colleague of many years, Gene Marks,

the small business

columnist for the Guardian and the Philadelphia Enquirer, hometown newspaper. It's baseball season.

We relax a little bit, not too much with headlines, however. Inflation soars to 3.3%.

That word soar is a choice of the Wall Street Journal front page, not me, driven by higher

gasoline costs. And then we look down for relief from this challenge, and we find something

equally alarming. Consumer sentiment hits lowest level on record. Jane, a very good evening to you.

Neither of those headlines are a good atmosphere for a small

business, but let's begin with inflation. This looks to be entirely driven by energy costs, and that is a

very volatile sector right now. We have no idea what's going to happen next. Is there a defense

mechanism for small business? You have a recommendation. Good

evening to you. Hi, John. Yeah, you know, the energy costs are certainly going up. I think inflation

has been fueled by that. We're not going to see that relieved anytime soon. You know, it's commodities

market. Oil is still very volatile as you and I are having our conversation right now. And who

knows if the war is going to resume in the next two weeks, which will make things

even more so.

I think if you're running a business, you have to expect that your energy costs are going to be

higher.

And by the way, it's not just, you know, related to driving.

It is also, you know, there are so many products, plastics, inks, some, you know,

manufacture products, dyes that are petroleum-based, rubber as well. So it's, you know, again,

I just want to make sure we're clear that this is not, this cost, the increase in the cost

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