● How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked (& Didn’t)
Joseph S. Moore
Review via Publishers Weekly
“Getting ahead has never been easier than it is today,” contends historian and investor Moore (Founding Sins) in this sweeping history of financial advice in the U.S. Moore takes readers through case studies of financial success and failure, debunking commonly held beliefs and extrapolating lessons that can be applied now. Demonstrating that “the story of a cash-only, debt free, rugged-individualist America is entirely fictional,” he describes how Benjamin Franklin got his start in the printing business by going thoroughly into debt. Elsewhere, he demonstrates that supposedly new phenomena have historical precedents. Women, for example, have always been active investors; Abigail Adams, wife of the second U.S. president, began buying government bonds after the American Revolution and ultimately achieved a lifetime annualized return of 18%, almost equaling that of billionaire Warren Buffett.

● Profit vs. Progress: Why Socially Responsible Investment Doesn’t Work and How to Fix It
Brad Swanson
Summary via publisher (MIT Press)
Wall Street thrives by telling investors that clever financial strategies can reverse the trade-off between corporate profits and social progress. But the link between greater corporate social responsibility and improved financial performance is an illusion. Profit vs. Progress dissects the massive $30 trillion “socially responsible” or “sustainable” finance industry—and finds the emperor has no clothes. At best, sustainable investing typically delivers average rates of financial and social returns. But it makes social and environmental crises harder to overcome, by using financial gimmickry to distract our attention from real solutions. Author Brad Swanson argues that corporations in competitive markets act without moral values, and ethical investment can’t prod them to take greater social responsibility. The only way to change the outcome of the game is to change the rules. The solutions will have to come from legislatures, not corporate boardrooms.

● How Currency Markets Work: An Insider’s Guide to a System Driven by Geopolitics and Trader Psychology
Andrew Nissenbaum and Patrick Cullen
Summary via publisher (Wiley)
In How Currency Markets Work, a veteran currency trader and a geopolitical risk analyst deliver a comprehensive and street-smart guide for understanding currency markets. The authors combine insights from the worlds of trading, economics, and geopolitics to create an eye-opening and original new take on how currency prices are determined. This book bridges the gap between how currency markets are taught and how they actually trade, using character-driven narratives built on real-world market events and data to explain currency trading successes and failures in intuitive and practical ways.

Please note that the links to books above are affiliate links with Amazon.com and James Picerno (a.k.a. The Capital Spectator) earns money if you buy one of the titles listed. Also note that you will not pay extra for a book even though it generates revenue for The Capital Spectator. By purchasing books through this site, you provide support for The Capital Spectator’s free content. Thank you!

US stocks led the way. The Vanguard Total US Stock Market ETF (VTI) surged 10.4% last month. The rally left US equities comfortably in the black year to date, with a 6.0% advance.

Stocks in emerging markets (VWO) and US real estate investment trusts (VNQ) were the second- and third-best performers last month. The weakest increase in April came from US bonds (BND), which edged up a thin 0.1%.

Commodities (GSG) extended their rally, rising for a fourth straight month, propelled by turmoil in the Middle East that has raised energy costs. Gold (GLD), however, didn’t participate, and edged down 1.5%.

Year to date, nearly every slice of global markets is posting an advance through April’s close. The downside exceptions: foreign corporate bonds (PICB), government bonds in developed markets ex-US (BWX), and bitcoin (GBTC).

The Global Market Index (GMI) recovered its losses from the previous month, jumping to a new record high in April. GMI is an unmanaged benchmark (maintained by The Capital Spectator) that holds all the major asset classes (except cash) in market-value weights via ETFs and serves as a competitive benchmark for globally diversified, multi-asset-class portfolio strategies.

GMI rallied 8.1% last month and is now up 6.0% for the year to date. It has enjoyed a strong winning streak over the past year, advancing in 12 of the past 13 months—its strongest bull run in a decade.

Jerome Powell, in his appearance yesterday as Fed chair, presided over the central bank’s widely expected announcement that it would leave its target rate unchanged at a 3.50%–3.75% range. The Fed, in its policy statement, noted that “inflation is elevated, in part reflecting the recent increase in global energy prices.”

Powell, responding to a question about war‑driven price surges at Wednesday’s press conference, said “it hasn’t even peaked yet.” He added: “I think we’d want to see the backside of that and progress on tariffs before we even thought about reducing rates. If we need to hike, we will; we will certainly signal that,” but not now.

The Treasury market is starting to move on from waiting. The 2‑year yield, which is widely monitored as a market‑based outlook on policy, shot up to just under 3.97%, close to the wartime peak set early in the conflict.

The benchmark 10‑year yield also rose, jumping to 4.34%, which is likewise close to its wartime peak.

The Treasury market’s implied inflation forecasts are also rising again, based on the spread between nominal rates and their inflation‑indexed counterparts. Notably, the forecast via the 5‑year maturity increased to 2.67% yesterday, setting a new peak since the war began and widening the gap further relative to the Fed’s 2% inflation target.

Despite the mounting inflation worries in the Treasury market, the Fed is expected to keep rates steady through the end of the year, based on Fed funds futures.

Meanwhile, oil prices remain elevated. The U.S. benchmark (West Texas Intermediate) traded well above the $100‑a‑barrel mark for a second day and remains close to its wartime peak. Energy costs have already lifted consumer inflation in March due to surging energy prices, and a repeat performance is expected for the April data.

The growing mismatch between a Fed sitting on its hands and a worried bond market won’t last. The question is which side will blink first. Only one side gets to be right about inflation. The key variable, of course, is how the Iran conflict plays out, and for the moment a stalemate endures as the US and Iran hold fast to their respective views that they can wait each other out. Meantime, the inflation clock is ticking.

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Visibility for the rate outlook at today’s Fed meeting, by contrast, is clear as a bell. Fed funds futures are pricing in a 100% probability that the target rate will remain at its current 3.50%–3.75% range. After that, the clarity fades.

The bond market is struggling to price in the twin threats of higher inflation and slower economic growth—the dual effects of the Middle East turmoil that has elevated energy costs. The odds of a quick resolution remain low, a calculus reaffirmed after President Trump on Tuesday told aides “to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, U.S. officials said,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. Treasury yields have increased recently but have pulled back from the peak that followed the start of the war on Feb. 28. The market is still flirting with the possibility of rate hikes, based on the policy‑sensitive 2‑year yield, which continues to trade above the effective Fed funds rate. That’s an indication that investor sentiment is pricing in modest odds that the central bank will be forced to raise interest rates at some point in the near term.

But not yet—and perhaps not for the next several FOMC meetings, or so Fed funds futures suggest.

The inflation bump has already begun and will likely persist in the near term. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) surged in March to a 3.3% year‑over‑year pace, up sharply from February’s 2.4%, driven by spiking energy costs. It’s unclear whether inflation will continue rising, but a safer bet is that it holds steady above 3% for now.

The Fed still still has some leftover ammunition in its policy toolkit in the form of a mildly hawkish bias, based on a simple model that compares the target rate to unemployment and inflation—the two components of the central bank’s dual mandate. On that basis, policy is slightly tight. The question is whether that will suffice in the months ahead, as the inflationary effects of the war—and now stalemate—in the US–Iran conflict endure.

A complicating factor is that the blowback from Middle East turmoil will weigh on global economic activity, which will spill over into the U.S. to some degree. If output slows enough, that could offset the need to hike rates.

Exactly how the twin shocks of higher inflation and slower growth will play out remains uncertain, thanks to the fog of war (stalemate), which is why the bond market—and the Fed—are playing a wait‑and‑see game.

“On the dual mandate, they’d say we’re roughly at a stable labor market,” Roger Ferguson, an economist and former Fed vice chair, told CNBC. “On the inflation side of the mandate, [there’s] a lot more work to be done with a sticky 3% [inflation rate], and I hope they argue, ‘we’re going to sit tight for a little while to see how this all plays out.’”

Two real‑time proxies on my short list for monitoring these risks are the 10‑year Treasury yield and the price of crude oil. The 10‑year yield closed yesterday at 4.35%, still comfortably below the intraday peak of nearly 4.50% since the war’s start, but the benchmark rate is drifting higher again. As it moves closer to the previous peak—and certainly if it breaks above it—that will signal that the market is demanding a higher inflation premium, which in turn will put more pressure on the Fed to hike.

A similar calculus applies to crude oil, based on the US benchmark (West Texas Intermediate). The price closed yesterday above $103 a barrel. That’s still below the $120 peak set in the early days of the war, but prices are trending up again. If the market begins to test the upper range set during the war, that should be viewed as a sign that inflation pressures will persist, if not intensify, for longer than expected.

In the end, the Fed may be standing still, but the markets certainly aren’t. With inflation simmering and geopolitical tensions refusing to fade, investors are left navigating a landscape where every data point feels like a potential turning point. The calm of today’s decision may not last long.

The path has been cleared for Kevin Warsh to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve in mid-May, when Jerome Powell’s term ends. Sen. Thom Tillis cancelled his obstruction to Warsh after the Department of Justice closed its criminal investigation of Powell, clearing the way for approval. The Senate Banking Committee has scheduled a vote on Warsh for tomorrow, and a greenlight is likely, which would allow the nomination to proceed to the full Senate. At that point, the real challenge begins.

Warsh arrives at the Fed during what looks like a perfect storm of challenges for monetary policy. The macro threats include turmoil from the Middle Eastern conflict, energy shocks, rising inflation pressures, and tariff‑strained effects on global trade. He will also oversee policy at a time of massive and growing federal debt. And then there’s President Trump’s demand for rate cuts. All of these factors will test Warsh’s resolve far more than anything he’ll face during the upcoming confirmation hearing.

For now, markets expect the Fed to keep rates steady. At tomorrow’s policy meeting, Fed funds futures are pricing in a virtual certainty of no change. In fact, futures anticipate that the current Fed funds target rate will remain at the 3.50%–3.75% range through the end of the year.

Defending a steady policy stance if inflation heats up will be difficult in the current environment. Making the case for rate cuts will be even harder at a time when energy costs have surged, pushing up headline inflation measures. An early sign of what’s coming appeared in the March consumer price report, which showed a 3.3% annual increase—a two‑year high and a sharp jump from February’s 2.4% pace. Spiking energy prices are the culprit.

The optimistic view is that the energy shock will be temporary and that, while prices have risen, the pace of increase will soon moderate. Perhaps—but with the Middle East crisis settling into a stalemate and energy exports still blocked, a quick resolution seems unlikely. There’s also the institutional memory lurking that the Fed predicted that the inflation shock of 2021-2022 would be temporary and modest, which turned out to be one of the biggest policy errors in decades. Arguing that it’s different this time will be a rough position to defend.

What is clear is that the longer energy prices remain elevated, the greater the risk that higher inflation becomes embedded in the economy.

For context on what may be developing, The Capital Spectator generated a forecast using a basic ensemble model to project the near‑term outlook. Unsurprisingly, the modeling indicates that headline CPI inflation is likely to edge higher and hold above 4% for the foreseeable future.

Core CPI is expected to follow a similar path, though at a lower level of roughly 3%‑plus.

In other words, the inflation shock moving through the global economy is being driven by energy, food, and commodities more broadly. Central banks often struggle with inflation rooted in these factors, which is why the Fed prioritizes core inflation as its target.

Given the war‑driven shifts in the inflation backdrop, cutting rates will be a difficult case for Warsh to make to his fellow policymakers on the Fed board. That may set up a new conflict with Trump, who has been publicly pushing for rate cuts.

One scenario in which rate cuts could become pragmatic is if the energy shock weakens growth more than it raises inflation. In that case, the Fed may lean on its mandate to maximize employment as justification for easing policy.

The only certainty at the moment is that a resolution to the Fed’s dilemma appears unlikely anytime soon. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, blocking roughly 20% of global oil supply flows.

In short, the real test for the Fed isn’t the upcoming vote—it’s the storm waiting for Kevin Warsh on the other side of it, when he steps into a Fed facing the fiercest crosswinds in a generation.

Focusing on Thursday’s GDP release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis points to a pickup in output following Q4’s tepid 0.5% rise. This week’s Q1 data, by contrast, is projected to increase to an annuallized 2.3% rate via the median estimate.

The path ahead is fraught due to the slow‑moving but ongoing blowback from the Middle East turmoil, which has blocked energy exports from the Gulf. The conflict’s continuing reverberations are expected to lift inflation and slow economic growth. The US is better positioned than Europe and much of Asia, but America isn’t immune.

Survey data for April highlight US resilience, at least in relative terms. “US business activity growth recovered slightly in April, having slowed to near‑stagnation in March following the outbreak of war in the Middle East,” reports S&P Global via the US Composite PMI Output Index, a GDP proxy. “However, the overall pace of expansion remained subdued, most notably in the services economy, where demand faltered.”

The stalemate in the war suggests that a resolution could be brewing. But until energy exports from the Gulf resume, the headwinds for growth—and the tailwinds for inflation—will persist and strengthen.

“A diplomatic settlement to the Iran war at some point would bring some immediate relief,” forecasts the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a think tank. “But extensive physical destruction to critical infrastructure in Iran and around the Persian Gulf means US economic growth will likely continue to suffer over the medium term to long term.”

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● Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed
Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff
Review via The New York Times
“Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed” begins with a simple proposition. We live in a bewildering moment defined by a bewildering man: Elon Musk.
Not that the book’s authors, Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, believe there’s much to be gained by peering into Musk’s soul. Muskism, like Fordism, is not an individual but a system. Henry Ford was the industrialist who pioneered the use of the assembly line and the $5-a-day wage. Fordism characterized the form of 20th-century capitalism that paired “mass production with mass consumption.” Musk is the entrepreneur who sells electric cars and satellite service (among other things). Muskism characterizes a new, technologically driven political economy that dismantles state institutions with one hand while promoting self-reliance, or the fantasy of it, with the other.

● Capitalism For All: Inclusive Economics and the Future-Proofing of America
John Hope Bryant
Summary via publisher (Wiley)
Capitalism For All: Inclusive Economics and the Future-Proofing of America by John Hope Bryant presents a revolutionary framework for rebuilding American prosperity through economic inclusion rather than division. As the founder and CEO of Operation HOPE, America’s first non-profit social investment banking organization, and a former vice-chairman of the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, Bryant brings decades of frontline experience empowering underserved communities. This book addresses America’s growing economic inequality and social fragmentation by demonstrating how inclusive capitalism – not exclusionary policies – can restore the middle class, revitalize the American Dream, and maintain our position as the world’s leading economy.

● How to Get a Return on Failure: Fail Smarter―Return Stronger
John C. Maxwell
Summary via publisher (Forbes Books)
How to Get a Return on Failure by John C. Maxwell is a transformative guide for leaders, professionals, and personal growth seekers ready to change their relationship with failure. Drawing from decades of leadership experience, Maxwell reframes failure not as a dead end but as a critical investment in future success. The book addresses the emotional weight of failure and replaces fear with strategy, helping readers overcome self-doubt, regret, and perfectionism. Instead of being defined by what went wrong, Maxwell invites readers to lead with purpose shaped by what they’ve learned.

Please note that the links to books above are affiliate links with Amazon.com and James Picerno (a.k.a. The Capital Spectator) earns money if you buy one of the titles listed. Also note that you will not pay extra for a book even though it generates revenue for The Capital Spectator. By purchasing books through this site, you provide support for The Capital Spectator’s free content. Thank you!

How Wise is the Crowd? Bias and Edge in Prediction Markets
Avaneesh Deleep (University of California, Berkeley), et al.
March 2026
Prediction markets are increasingly relied upon as real-time probability oracles, yet their predictive signals remain polluted by structural inefficiencies. While prior literature documents anomalies like the favorite-longshot bias at an aggregate level, the microstructural origins of these distortions—specifically, who generates and exploits them—remain unstudied in modern ecosystems. To investigate this, we engineer a scalable, multi-threaded data architecture capable of synchronously ingesting and persisting tick-level order flow, decentralized wallet histories, and user commentary across Polymarket and Kalshi… Our findings challenge the idea that favorite-longshot bias is present in every prediction market. In the markets we find it to be present, such as Mention Markets, the classic favorite-longshot bias may in fact be a statistical artifact masking a pervasive “Yes Bias”, driven by extreme temporal volatility and not controlling for the time to market completion in previous methodologies. Furthermore, we find that “Whales”, or the most capitalized players, are not the most sophisticated. By dynamically reconstructing participant positions, we demonstrate that Whales, on average, systematically bleed expected value to small-order traders. Rather than acting as sharp informed players, these large actors likely trade on ideological conviction, structurally overpaying for specific narratives and suffering from adverse selection against smaller participants.

Kalshi and the Rise of Macro Markets
Anthony M. Diercks (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System), et al.
February 2026
Prediction markets offer a new market-based approach to measuring macroeconomic expectations in real-time. We evaluate the accuracy of prediction market-implied forecasts from Kalshi, the largest federally regulated prediction market overseen by the CFTC. We compare Kalshi with more traditional survey and market-implied forecasts, examine how expectations respond to macroeconomic and financial news, and how policy signals are interpreted by market participants. Our results suggest that Kalshi markets provide a high-frequency, continuously updated, distributionally rich benchmark that is valuable to both researchers and policymakers.

Market Efficiency in Prediction Markets – A Comparison with Derivatives
Michele Fabi (CREST-ENSAE), et al.
April 2026
We study pricing efficiency in decentralized prediction markets by comparing marketimplied probabilities from Polymarket with benchmarks derived from option-implied riskneutral distributions extracted from the derivatives market. We study Bitcoin and Ethereum prediction bets and find that, although Polymarket prices broadly track option-implied benchmarks, they show systematic price differences driven by behavioral factors and market frictions. Price differences are most pronounced in tail events, during periods of high volatility, and in response to major macroeconomic shocks, and they reflect the influence of sentiment, attention, and blockchain-specific risks. These results reveal both efficiency and behavioral distortions in prediction markets.

Minority Report: Contrarian Traders, Prediction Markets, and the Return of Post-Earnings Drift
Chloe Feng (Stanford U., Graduate School of Business, Students)
March 2026
Prediction markets on the Polymarket platform allow traders to bet on whether a company will beat or miss an earnings-per-share consensus target. Using 338 resolved markets matched to IBES analyst consensus forecasts, I document four findings… Taken together, the results suggest that a small contrarian minority drives prediction market accuracy, and that their signal is most valuable as a short-side veto: when the crowd assigns a low beat probability, shorting into earnings produces significant risk-adjusted returns over a 10-day horizon.

Skilled Liquidity Provision in Prediction Markets: Evidence from 150 Million Trades
Hsiang-Chieh (Alex) Yang (Augusta University)
March 2026
Do skilled traders provide liquidity, and when? I study this question using 150 million trades across more than 200,000 markets on Polymarket, a zero-fee prediction market with observable outcomes and wallet-level identification. The zero-fee setting isolates the information channel from fee confounds present in prior work on Kalshi. The central finding is dual-role profitability: skilled traders (top 5% by rolling historical accuracy) earn $121 as makers and $63 as takers per market entered, extracting $228 million over three years, while ordinary traders lose on both sides. Aggregate spread transfer is economically negligible, but this null masks the skilled-ordinary asymmetry. Skilled traders strategically choose their role, providing liquidity more often in highervolume and shorter-duration markets. Within-trader variation confirms this reflects strategy, not selection. Placebo tests, wash-trading exclusions, out-of-sample persistence, and domain-specific skill classifications that measure accuracy within rather than across market categories validate the skill classification and confirm that the findings are not artifacts of cross-domain luck. Trader skill, not the maker-taker distinction, determines who profits in prediction markets.

From Iran to Taylor Swift: Informed Trading in Prediction Markets
Joshua Mitts (Columbia Law School) and Moran Ofi (U. of Haifa)
March 2026
This Article presents a systematic empirical and legal study of informed trading on prediction markets. We document a series of case studies in which traders appear to have exploited material nonpublic information on Polymarket and Kalshi, spanning events from the joint U.S.-Israel February 2026 strike on Iran to pre-announcement trading in Taylor Swift’s engagement. Building on these cases, we develop a statistical screening of all Polymarket markets from February 2024 through February 2026, analyzing over 210,000 suspicious wallet-market pairs using a composite score that combines bet size anomalies, profitability, pre-event timing, and directional concentration. Flagged traders achieve a 69.9% win rate well in excess of chance, and we estimate approximately $143 million in aggregate anomalous profit. We then analyze the legal framework governing this conduct, finding that neither the classical nor misappropriation theories of securities fraud map cleanly onto geopolitical or macroeconomic event contracts, and that the CFTC’s principal anti-fraud vehicle, Rule 180.1, is narrower in critical respects than SEC Rule 10b-5 and has rarely been applied to prediction markets. We argue that a comprehensive regulatory response requires mandatory registration and surveillance obligations for any platform serving U.S. persons, contract-level rules targeting high-risk information channels, and an extended misappropriation theory directed at informed traders on decentralized platforms that resist operator-level regulation.

Learn To Use R For Portfolio Analysis
Quantitative Investment Portfolio Analytics In R:
An Introduction To R For Modeling Portfolio Risk and Return
By James Picerno

Using a set of ETFs (and one closed-end fund for Central and Eastern Europe) to track investor sentiment on a regional basis highlights a wide mix of performances since the war started on Feb. 28 through yesterday’s close (Apr. 22). Initially, stocks fell just about everywhere, but in late-March a rebound kicked in, although the recovery has been conspicuously uneven, driven in part by differences in energy vulnerability related to the sharp drop in oil exports from the Gulf region.

Leading the winners: stocks in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are up 5%. That contrasts with a 7.8% loss for equities in Africa (AFK).

US shares (SPY) are in the winner’s circle via a 4% gain since hostilities started.

Notably, a globally diversified portfolio of stocks (VT) has recovered, and is currently up 1.8%. A key driver of that gain comes from US shares: a global equities fund ex-US (VXUS) is still down 1.4% since Feb. 28.

The question is how markets will price in the energy risk that Fatih Birol outlined. The pain will vary dramatically, depending on the level of reliance on energy imports. Asia is especially vulnerable.

“The war in the Middle East and the ensuing energy supply shock are raising inflation, weakening external balances, and narrowing policy options, underscoring the region’s dependence on imported oil and gas,” the IMF advised. “Even so, we project Asia to remain the main driver of global growth. The 5 percent expansion last year will moderate to 4.4% and 4.2% this year and next, according to the reference forecast in the latest World Economic Outlook that assumes the energy shock proves transient. We expect China and India to contribute 70% of the region’s growth.

Nonetheless, “The headwinds will test Asia’s resilience,” the IMF continued.

The same will be true for the rest of the world, although as varying results in stock markets suggest, the effects will be distributed asymmetrically.

Learn To Use R For Portfolio Analysis
Quantitative Investment Portfolio Analytics In R:
An Introduction To R For Modeling Portfolio Risk and Return
By James Picerno

On its face, the 1.7% increase in retail spending last month looks encouraging, marking a sharp acceleration from February’s 0.7% gain. Soaring gas prices were part of the mix, although the gains were broad‑based.

“It’s a blowout retail sales figure for March,” wrote Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, in a report. “Stripping out the big surge in spending on gas due to the Middle East conflict, it’s a solid but more modest 0.6% increase.”

Monthly comparisons can be misleading due to short‑term noise, so it’s useful to monitor the year‑over‑year trend. On that basis, spending was stable, rising 4.0% last month compared with the year‑ago level.

An alternative measure of retail spending highlights a relatively robust trend. The Visa Spending Momentum Index rose to its highest level in four years in March. The benchmark, which measures the health of consumer spending, suggests that demand has been strengthening compared with recent history.

One‑time effects from tax refunds may be a factor, notes Gary Schlossberg, global strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “Pressure on household budgets is being cushioned, for now, by sizable increases in tax refunds tied to last year’s legislation,” he wrote in a research note yesterday.

James McCann, senior economist for investment strategy at Edward Jones, agrees. “Households remain resilient for now, potentially leaning on tax refunds and broader savings to keep spending in the face of the latest price squeeze,” he said.

The caveat is that inflation is also a factor. March spending was clearly affected by higher gas prices and broader price pressures that boosted nominal sales but strained household budgets.

A clearer picture may emerge in April, when the temporary effects of tax refunds begin to fade.

“Overall, the American consumer is still healthy,” Navy Federal Credit Union’s Heather Long opined. “Extra income from tax refunds is helping many households weather this oil shock, but that extra money won’t last forever.”