Federal News: 

The whole high-price-of-fuel thing?  Yeah, it’s not going to get any better: In a recent NY Times opinion article, a political economics professor at Cambridge put the world on notice that the 1970s fuel crises were chump change compared to what’s coming at us.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, already stressed energy markets were pushed over the edge.  Prior to Putin’s aggression in that country, fuel supplies had already been struggling to meet demand; prices notably surged during the past year.  (This despite the U.S. shale boom during the previous decade; but the rate of growth of shale gas has been falling since 2020.)  And the new OPEC Plus cartel of oil producers now exercises a decidedly anti-U.S. position.

State News:

Ohio General Assembly to fast-track townships & smaller cities’ ARPA funds: In anticipation of the 2nd tranche of COVID relief to arrive from the U.S. Treasury this month or next, the G.A. has scheduled HB 377 (described below) for full action before the summer recess to distribute those funds to Ohio’s townships and smaller cities (so-called nonentitlement units of local government, or NEUs, under ARPA).

Federal News:

Real discussions afoot as to changing the global supply chain model of past several decades:  Appearing on Thursday, April 21 at the World Bank and IMF, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the audience the time has come to rejigger global supply chains that are “not secure.”  With the more aggressive stance taken by adversarial countries such as Russia and its ally China, Secretary Yellen stated that global supply chains had proved to be unstable, and that supply chains should be reshaped around “trusted partners,” even if it meant higher product costs.