“'Working Families Foot Trump's Bill Twice' as Fed Hikes Rates Amid Worsening Affordability Crisis”, 16 September 2026 (Photo via Common Dreams — the original report)
As it ran on the front
The filing, reconciled. On August 28th, Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh told an audience the central bank was "not ruling out" a rate hike, because inflation remained too high. By September 11th, The Hill had the receipt for why: inflation stayed stubbornly elevated "amid the war with Iran." Not amid a shopping spree. Not amid a raise. Amid a war.
On September 16th, the Fed did what Warsh signaled it would do: it raised the federal funds rate a quarter point, to 3.75 to 4 percent, the first increase in more than three years. The same day, progressive economists flagged the arithmetic working families were about to run twice — once through the tariffs and the war pushing prices up, and again through the higher borrowing costs the Fed had just attached to every mortgage and car loan in the file. The next morning, September 17th, The Hill ran the sequel: "Warsh wins credibility with rate hike." Nobody ran a sequel about the mortgage payment.…
…(cont) By this weekend, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari was still finding inflation "too high" in what he called "all aspects" of the economy, even after stripping out food and energy, the two categories currently carrying the load. Energy is the tell. Oil crossed $100 a barrel. Diesel crossed $6 a gallon in parts of the country. The Washington Examiner asked the only honest question sitting in this drawer: rate hikes cannot stop drone strikes, so why is the Fed billing American families for the Hormuz blockade.
Here is the reconciliation, hon. The Fed's own reporting names the cause as a war. The Fed's only tool is a rate hike, and a rate hike does not reach a war, does not reach a blockade, does not reach a barrel of oil sitting off Hormuz. It reaches a mortgage rate. It reaches a car payment. It reaches, per the Fed's own 2012 target and the St. Louis Fed's own description of running the economy "efficiently," a retiree's fixed income, which loses a little more purchasing power every year inflation clears 2 percent.
The war caused the price. The Fed sent the bill. The bill did not go to the tanker. It went to the account with the mortgage in it.
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“They tell you the enemy is inflation, then they point the only weapon they've got — interest rates — at your mortgage instead of the oil sitting off Hormuz behind a war premium. The tariffs already took a bite, now the rate hike takes a second one, working families paying twice for a war they didn't start and can't reach. That's the con: call it "fighting inflation" so nobody asks who actually owns the barrel.”
“Look, the Fed has one job and one tool, they can't exactly send the federal funds rate to escort a tanker through Hormuz, so tightening credit is the responsible, disciplined move here — sound money, full stop. ...Although if the diesel's the problem and the rate hike doesn't touch diesel, I guess I'm defending raising mortgage payments to fight a war. Did I say that? That's not — let's start over.”
The US Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2023, prompting renewed criticism from progressive economists and Democratic lawmakers who argue that President Donald Trump’s tariffs and warmongering are fueling inflation and further squeezing working families. The 12-member Federal Open…
Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve’s Minneapolis branch, said Sunday that inflation is “still too high,” days after the central bank raised interest rates. “Even if we strip out energy, which is really volatile, and strip out food, they matter a lot, but in terms of where the economy is going, inflation is...
Oil just broke $100 a barrel. Diesel has surged past $6 a gallon in parts of the country. Yet this week the Federal Reserve responded to the pain American families are feeling at the pump by raising interest rates for the first time since 2023 by a quarter of a percentage point.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
