The Media Is Selling a Story—I’m Not Buying It

Having once made the sausage, I understand where the ingredients come from.

If you’ve been a Field Notes reader for a minute, you’ll know I spent 17 years writing about finance for The Wall Street Journal. What I can tell you based on that experience is that when the mainstream outlets start pumping “resilient economy” headlines while the hard data tells a completely different story, well, that’s editors chasing a narrative.

They have their reporters hunt for sources who will provide the quotes that fit the prescribed optimism—the preferred narrative—and they ignore the niggling realities.

A reminder of that time returned to me this morning here in Portugal when I saw a headline atop a Financial Times article: “Tumbling gold price puts ‘haven’ status in doubt.’

Alex, I’ll take “Things that were never true” for $200…

Outside of some rando TikTok influencers and Twitter/X scribes trying to stand apart by going against common sense, no one who truly understands the gold market would say the metal’s safe haven status is in doubt. As I noted in yesterday’s dispatch, there are technical reasons why gold is down, owing to leverage and liquidity issues exposed by way of the ongoing conflict in Iran.

But that’s the way it is with mainstream media. There’s a narrative to push—regardless of reality.

Which brings me back ‘round to America’s resilient economy.

We’ll use this recent Bloomberg headline as target practice: Markets Bracing for War Shock Are Ignoring Resilient US Economy.

The nut of that article insisted that strong tech earnings and sustained AI spending are proof the economy is robust… which is sort of like saying, “The Cincinnati Bengals were a stellar football team in 2025 because running back Chase Brown had more than 1,400 scrimmage yards!” (Never mind that the Bengals won just six games and lost 11.)

I’ll be blunt: The US economy is not just softer than the headlines claim; it’s moving in the wrong direction on multiple fronts. And with oil prices holding near the $90 to $100 range, and natural gas facing upward pressure, the summer of 2026 is shaping up to deliver a broad-based hit that will ripple across the American household—from fuel tanks to dinner plates.

So, let’s go to the numbers to better understand where the US economy really sits these days, and where it’s likely headed because of what’s been happening in Arabia and Persia:

1. Nonfarm payrolls dropped 92,000 in February 2026—the biggest monthly loss in four months. Not a “blip.” A contraction.
2. Unemployment ticked up to 4.4%. More people out of work; total employment down 185,000 in a single month.
3. The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index has now fallen for six straight months. That’s not a forecast—it’s a warning light flashing red for activity ahead.
4. Existing-home sales collapsed 8.4% month-over-month in January and are down 4.4% year-over-year. Pending sales are sliding too. Housing—the traditional backbone—is freezing up on affordability and inventory issues.
5. The Fed raised its 2026 Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation projection to 2.7% (up 0.3 percentage points from the December 2025 projections). Core PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation indicator, was also revised higher to 2.7% for 2026—reflecting the Fed now expecting more persistent price pressures through the year ahead, rather than the faster cooling they had hoped for.
6. Core PCE inflation (year-over-year) rose to 3% in February, up from 2.8% a month earlier and a full percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate. Continued proof that underlying persistent inflation remains firm and is not decelerating as quickly as policymakers expected.
7. The Consumer Price Index, or CPI, the inflation rate we see reported every month, held steady at 2.4% year-over-year in February 2026 (unchanged from January), but core CPI (excluding food and energy) stayed elevated at 2.5%. Shelter and services costs remain sticky, while early energy price rebounds are starting to feed through—signaling that the disinflation trend has stalled.
8. The federal budget deficit is projected at $1.9 trillion for FY 2026 and will very likely exceed $2 trillion because of increased war spending.
9. Net interest payments on the debt are exploding. They’ll likely cross $1 trillion by the time fiscal 2026 ends in September. Debt service is now crowding out pretty much everything else.
10. Payroll growth over the past year has slowed to a crawl (+0.4%), and economists are trimming their consumer spending forecasts. The “resilient consumer” story is cracking along class lines—the so-called K-shaped economy, with top earners still hanging on while everyone else retrenches.

So, those are 10 bullet points that say: The Resilient American Economy that cable news channels love to sell isn’t really resilient at all.

It’s an economy where excessive spending on tech and AI is driving a GDP growth narrative that doesn’t match the broader reality.

Now, we get to add on the pending impacts of The American Misadventures in Sandland.

You already know oil prices are elevated because you feel it in your wallet every time you go to the gas station these days. But that’s just the start of the pain to come.

A few days ago, France’s Finance Minister told the French people that 30% to 40% of Gulf refining capacity has been damaged or destroyed by Iran’s retaliatory strikes—a data point Americans aren’t being told.

The upshot is that the global oil market faces a daily shortage of 11 million barrels, and the French minister warned his countrymates that restoring capacity could take up to three years for damaged facilities, and several months to restart those that were urgently shut down.

What to expect:

• Elevated oil prices: High prices will persist even after the war ends, likely keeping average gasoline prices in the $3.50 to $4 per gallon range for quite a while. That’s hundreds of extra dollars in household costs this year.

• Dinner plates: Trucking, shipping, farm input costs, fertilizers (tied to nat gas), refrigeration, and processing all get more expensive. Food-at-home inflation is already running 2% to 3% on a year-over-year basis. Expect another 1 percentage point jump. So, grocery bills keep rising.
• Utility bills climb: Elevated natural gas/electricity costs (again, tied to higher nat-gas prices) raise summer cooling bills and embed into rents/shelter costs, which is a major CPI category.
• Consumer spending weakens: Higher energy costs act as a tax on households and businesses, slowing GDP and exacerbating the consumer K-shaped split.
• Inflation and Fed policy: Renewed energy-driven CPI risks to the upside will keep core measures higher, limiting rate cuts and pressuring financial markets.

Overall, we’re moving into the stagflationary economy I’ve been warning about for a few years.

That’s why I’ve added more exposure to gold in my portfolio, as I noted yesterday.

It’s also why I continue to buy bitcoin every Monday.

My bet is that summer 2026 is going to test a lot of the optimistic assumptions we hear today in the mainstream media.

The media sing of happy days, but the data is writing a dirge.