Happy 250th America…Let’s Celebrate all year long!!
GDP continues to grow faster than expectations…Q2 2026 showed real GDP increased 2.2% versus the previous estimate of 1.5%.
What does it mean – The report shows that private domestic demand strengthened materially and provided a firm underlying growth signal, even as consumer price inflation remained elevated.
Unemployment hits record…The US unemployment rate is nearing a record number of consecutive months below 5%.
What does it mean – Truist chief strategist Keith Lerner pointed out that the longtime record dates back to the mid-1960s. It also signals continued economic growth and stability.
Federal work force shrinks to lowest level since 1966…More than 330,000 federal employees have left their positions over the past year through firings, resignations, or retirements, and those roles were not replaced.
What does it mean – For many years, the federal government expanded almost automatically. Agencies grew without any checks or balances, payroll costs increased, and programs accumulated with little structural reform or accountability. Simply put, growth in the size of government became a bad habit.
For the first time in my lifetime, this administration has reversed that pattern by tightening hiring policies, enforcing workforce accountability, and declining to automatically refill departing positions. Offices were consolidated where possible, and redundant functions were reduced rather than preserved simply to maintain headcount.
At the same time the federal workforce has declined, the private-sector employment has strengthened.
By all measures unemployment is at record lows and job growth continues to exceed expectations. More Americans are working and earning higher wages as manufacturing continues to grow and re-onshoring continues to benefit from tariffs making it more affordable to produce locally than to import (still a long way to go). Private employers, not federal agencies, are driving new opportunities.
Capitalism continues to prove that economic strength is far more durable when growth comes from productive private employment and not from expanding government payrolls. Along with low taxes, less bureaucracy and smaller government to maintain, there is more capital available for the entrepreneurs, and business owners to invest in in capex and expand their businesses that lead to future business investment and rising wages.
Shrinking the federal workforce while private hiring accelerates is a sign of economic rebalancing is going in the right direction.
Total CPI increased 0.6% month-over-month…Led by a 5.2% jump in the energy index, energy continues to hammer everyone’s pocketbook.
What does it mean – Most of the inflation is coming from the increase in the energy sector due to the war in Iran and increase in demand.
Surely most Americans wish we had those oil and gas refineries back online that were shut down over the last 20 to 30 years due to massive increases in regulation and pressure to save the world from climate change. Yes, there is climate change daily and the Green New Deal created a climate of economic chaos for us all.
According to The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) latest article dated October 6th 2026, The EIA’s register of permanently shutdown refineries carries 90 entries for the 50 states between January 1990 and January 2026, totaling 3,550,327 barrels a day of crude distillation capacity. National Capacity rose by 2,588,527 barrels a day over the same time period.
Welcome to Hotel California – You really can’t leave unless you can afford the gas.
California alone accounts for 17 of the 90 closures since 1990. That is 19% of the national; total, in a state that brings the balance in across mountain ranges or by sea. Meaning CA refines and ships refined oil and gas to other states via ship, truck, train and pipelines. Over 1.72 million barrels a day are gone due to California’s commitment to green energy. Your politicians must have been taking DEI classes instead of learning how energy is produced. Not to mention forgetting that electric cars and all our homes need energy. In the meantime, CA is paying the highest gas prices and some of the highest utility prices in the country. It should not be a surprise to see millions leave along with the very businesses that built this state.
Most of the destruction to the refineries came during Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” tour, which he still claims the world is about to end. The only problem is it is not global warming killing people it is the cold.
In the 1970’s I remember sitting in 3rd grade in Dana Point, CA as our teachers told us we are going to experience the next ice age. I still remember thinking about the dinosaurs and wondering if I had a ski jacket. In fact the “Great Freeze made the cover of Time Magazine three different times. The first on 12/3/1973. The second on 1/31/1977 and the last on 12/24/1979. The fear mongers of the 70’s are still getting it wrong.
Today, global climate related death risk is near zero.
“Drill baby drill” is delivering the raw supply but now refineries are at 98% capacity, and we cannot afford to have even one go offline for an extended period of time. Companies and investors will not invest billions in new refineries if they do not have confidence that the policies in place today will stay in place. They can not afford to build if there is a chance DC or a political shift back to the “The Green New Deal” happens. It is also why private companies are investing directly into power companies. But there is massive regulation risk.
Energy investment from the very tech overlords who backed the “New Green Deal” like Gates, Bezos, and others, have realized that the massive amount of data and the energy to store, retrieve and learn from this data is massive and requires investments that we have never seen before. Private companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Google, Facebook, etc. are making enormous investments in nuclear, gas and coal to fuel their, no, your insatiable demand for data so that their profits continue to grow and they can continue to invest in solving society’s demands.
Capitalism is awesome. Don’t let DC, the fear mongers, and the Chinese bots online funded by China slow you and America down. We can’t afford to let China build data centers that will strip our companies of their technological edge, intellectual property rights, and steal their technology and use your data to weaken America. The USA cannot afford to overregulate and drive out the future. This wave of over regulation and fear mongering is already forcing startups to use data centers in China to be able to compete with large US companies. This regulation is further being driven by one side of the aisle that hates the term “Oligarchies” but is actually creating the fear and the regulations that are creating the very concept they despise and protects the very largest of companies from much needed competition. If only Bernie and Warren understood what they actually are saying.
This administration has already put in place the needed regulations that put the onus on the data centers to provide their own power and colling not the taxpayers and local communities. Meaning that building data centers going forward need to be self-contained and powered. The noise from the media and the fear mongering from one side of the aisle is exactly that. Remember in America the people are bigger than the government and in China if they want a data center, the government comes in and simply moves the local population and builds it and fuel it with resources diverted from the local community. We are competing against a power we are funding through our demand and overregulation and taxes here at home. Don’t let DC fool you. America struggled to long as it outsourced manufacturing to places like China lets not make the same mistake with what maybe the greatest evolution in technology in several generations.
The last thing corporate America wants to do is hurt the very people it serves and are buying their products. It is why the American economy is the envy of the world. It is the hockey stick to freedom and prosperity. When America ratified its constitution and officially formed its government it gave its citizens choices that the world had never seen before and created more wealth and prosperity freeing more people from slavery and indentured servitude than all nations combined. And even with this example, we find ourselves once again choosing between being great stewards or going along to get along. It is not easy. You have a choice. China, Saudi, Quatar, UAE, and Russia do not.
Let’s roll America!!
Doug De Groote, CFP®, MBA, CTC
Managing Director
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