It Looks Like – Bill Phanstiel

It Looks Like

To the Editor:

Most prices have never gone down. It will take more than just ten months to deflate four years of inflation. Still the lack of "affordability" is blamed on the current administration.

Key economic initiatives are long-term and will not be fully realized by the end of 2025 or even by mid-2026.

But the GDP is estimated to grow between 2.7 and 4 percent in this last Quarter. That 4 percent is the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank forecast.

Inflation through August ranged from 2.7 to 2.9 percent, not like the 5 percent annual average during Biden. And gas prices nationally average $2.98 per gallon, compared to $3.46 with Biden. One year later oil production is up by one million barrels per day.

Unemployment in the second quarter of 2025 stayed steady at 4.2 percent, but the stock market has slipped from its all-time high. Foreign investment and tariff revenues are at all time highs - possibly $400 billion for tariffs by the end of the year.

Goldman Sachs - the investment firm, estimates a reduction in the labor force of 50K jobs in October. That's non-farm payrolls and deferred resignations combined.

An Intercontinental Exchange report shows that nearly 875,000 homeowners now owe more on their mortgages than their properties are worth. That softens home prices and elevated borrowing costs squeeze household finances. In Cape Coral, Florida, for instance, home prices are down 15 percent from their peak making 11 percent of mortgages underwater, including more than one-third of those that originated between 2023 and 2024, when rates were highest. The rise in negative equity is concentrated among recent, lower-down-payment borrowers, particularly those with Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Affairs (VA) loans issued in 2023 and 2024.

Recent easing in mortgage rates has begun to open the refinance window for many borrowers, particularly those who originated loans in the past two years.

The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said the department found that 500,000 people are registered twice for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, while more than 5,000 deceased people have also been receiving the benefits. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested that everyone registered for SNAP benefits should reapply as a result of ongoing fraud discoveries. Vermont - one of 29 states responding to the survey, told NPR they only sent SNAP recipients' names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and home addresses going back to Jan. 2020, while other responding states sent those data fields and more.

Bill Phanstiel

Lyndon, Vt.