“When the fever broke,” she says, “there wasn’t a trumpet. Prices just stopped running away.” She leaves the strap coiled on the counter.
After close, Dan walks the aisles with a trash bag, peeling yesterday’s numbers off soup cans. He makes a small rule: if your milk was cheaper yesterday, you pay yesterday’s price today. The evening cashier blinks. “We’ll get in trouble,” he says. “Maybe,” Dan answers. “Maybe not.”
At home, Tammy’s hand rests on his back. He rubs at a stray sticker stuck to his palm. The adhesive is still warm—slow to give, then all at once—leaving a faint square where a number was.
Week Six. Morning, six weeks to the day. The bread truck is late and light; the driver shrugs and says the mill wants cash up front. A fresh invoice pings—FLOUR SURCHARGE EFFECTIVE NOW. Dan walks to the endcap, rips off $6.99, tries $9.49, then stops kidding himself and prints it clean: $14.00.
He carries the tape to the register. Tammy’s fingers brush his as he smooths the corners.
Outside, the Sunoco sign hesitates, then flips. $19.49 becomes $20.09. A man at pump three swears once, softly, like he’s praying backward. Someone takes a photo. Someone else does the math out loud, as if the numbers might blink back.
The cold air spills from the cases. The price gun clicks. The glue tacks his fingers. The bread reads $14.00. The sign across the street reads $20. The stickers don’t move.
Bibliography
1. Alesina, Alberto, and Lawrence H. Summers. “Central Bank Independence and Macroeconomic Performance: Some Comparative Evidence.” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 25, no. 2 (1993): 151–162. Classic cross-country evidence linking stronger central-bank independence to lower, more stable inflation.
2. Sargent, Thomas J., and Neil Wallace. “Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic.” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review 5, no. 3 (1981): 1–17. Foundational theory on fiscal dominance explaining how politicized money fuels inflation.
3. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. “Treasury–Federal Reserve Accord (1951).” FederalReserveHistory.org. Accessed August 26, 2025. Authoritative overview of the 1951 Accord that reset Fed independence after wartime debt pegs.
4. Congressional Research Service. “Federal Reserve: Governance and Oversight.” Updated 2023. Summary of Board structure, FOMC design, and governors’ 14-year, for-cause tenure protections.
5. U.S. Code. 12 U.S.C. §242. Cornell Legal Information Institute. Accessed August 26, 2025. Statutory basis for governors’ terms and “for cause” removal standard.
6. Adrian, Tobias, Richard K. Crump, and Emanuel Moench. “Treasury Term Premia: 1961–Present.” Federal Reserve Bank of New York (ACM Model) Data and Notes. Accessed August 26, 2025. Benchmark decomposition used to show how credibility shocks raise term premia.
7. Fleming, Michael J., Frank M. Keane, Antoine Martin, and William Riordan. “The Treasury Market Flash Event of February 25, 2021.” FEDS Notes, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, March 4, 2021. Explained how a weak 7-year auction and liquidity strains spiked yields within minutes.