Getting a cup of complimentary coffee at my credit union recently, I glanced to the left and saw a younger woman with a mass of pennies placing them into a machine for conversion to cash. "The US Mint stopped producing pennies," I said to her. “They might be valuable.”

She quickly replied, "I need gas."

Rising gas prices are an outcome of the US war of aggression against Iran, begun five months ago. As a result, inflationary pressures are rising stateside.

One thing is plain as day. Ceasefires between Iran and the US are temporary and connect with fluctuations of oil prices, currently increasing. Rising prices of oil drive price increases at the gas pump.

The logic of military conflicts is one of unpredictable outcomes, economically and politically.

Meanwhile, this sentence in the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation report stands out like a third thumb. “The index for energy increased 15.7% over the past 12 months due in large part to the index for gasoline rising 26.7% over the same period." That spike is despite presidential announcements about how well the war against Iran is going for the US to his dual audiences of MAGA voters and capitalist investors.

Apparently, repetition of a falsification has limitations. Don’t tell the president, though.

Inflation as a result of supply disruptions as we experienced with global value chains during the pandemic is a systemic contradiction. Global economic integration, e.g., the shift of US industry abroad that increases the distances of supply chains, is no risk-free strategy to increase profits and market share for corporate America.

We see in real time that the global economy which requires oil to operate feeds the imbalance........

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