This Week in ESG and Impact Investing

  The March Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows a sharp increase in inflation , signaling renewed economic pressure on Black- and minority-owned firms. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that consumer prices rose 3.3% over the 12 months ending in March , up from 2.4% in February . Core CPI rose 2.6% , while energy prices surged 12.5% year-over-year and food increased 2.7% . ( Bureau of Labor Statistics ) This represents a meaningful re-acceleration in inflation , with the largest increases concentrated in categories that disproportionately affect minority businesses and the communities they serve. Why the March CPI Is Especially Important This CPI release changes the economic narrative: Inflation re-accelerated Energy costs spiked sharply Core inflation remains sticky Food prices continue rising This combination creates a double squeeze on Black and minority firms: Higher operating costs Reduced customer purchasing power Industry Impact on Black and Minority Firms Black and mino...

The US unemployment rate was 4.3% in March, 2026, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, in construction, and in transportation and warehousing. Federal government employment continued to decline. BLS reported that the number of unemployed Black women fell from 804,000 to 691,000, by 113,000 persons in March, 2026. Note that the reported industries with job gains do not match industries where Black women are employed. Overall payroll employment increasing by 178,000 would mean 63% of the new jobs went to Black women. This is unlikely and indicates a need for further review. In other words, we do not trust these initial numbers... Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for people who are Asian (3.7 percent) decreased in March. The jobless rates for adult men (3.8 percent), adult women (4.0 percent), teenagers (13.7 percent), and people who are White (3.6 percent), Black (7.1 percent), or Hispanic (4.8 percent) showed li...

On March 26, 2026, I attended a public meeting at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors on the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act. I expected something highly technical and removed from everyday realities, but the conversation returned to the same concerns.  The meeting was divided into four panels: supervision, banking regulations, innovation, and consumer protection. The discussion centered on two themes: inconsistency in supervision and the pressure placed on community banks.  Panelists came from different institutions, but their concerns overlapped. The first panel on bank supervision made it clear that the issue is not a lack of rules, but how unevenly those rules are applied. Several speakers highlighted the issue of weak communication between regulators and banks, noting that expectations shift depending on the examiner or agency involved, which creates unpredictability that makes the system more difficult to navigate.  Instead of operating wit...

At POLITICO’s Economy Summit on March 25, 2026, the conversation around trade captured something bigger than tariffs alone: the sense that economic policy is now inseparable from political struggle.  The summit included a trade panel, “What’s Next for Trump’s Tariffs?,” with Greta Peisch, Everett Eissenstat, and Eugene Laney, along with a separate conversation with Peter Navarro.  That lineup mattered. It signaled that trade is no longer being discussed only as a technical issue for economists or lawyers but as a live political battleground involving executive power, business strategy, and the price Americans pay for everyday life.  What makes this moment especially important is that it comes after a major legal shock. On February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, ruling that Congress, not the president, holds the authority to impose tariffs of that scope.  But...

The latest Producer Price Index (PPI) release did not just come in elevated—it came in decisively hot. A 0.7% monthly increase, following 0.5% in January, is a pattern. And when you annualize the recent momentum, you are looking at 4–5%  annualized inflation pressure. Remember, PPI is not a prediction. It is a diagnostic tool. It tells us where inflation stress is forming inside the economy—before it becomes visible to consumers. And right now, that stress is building quietly but broadly. Goods prices are reaccelerating. Service costs are not cooling. Food costs moved higher. That combination matters more than the level of inflation. It is the distribution and direction that is important. We have now moved from: 0.4% → 0.5% → 0.7% Can We Use This to Predict Inflation? Yes — But Carefully If we take recent monthly PPI data and run a simple projection: [(1-mDec)(1-mJan)(1-mFeb)]**4 - 1] We get annualized inflation from 4 to 5 %. This is a meaningful, but PPI does not translate cleanl...

Saalex Event at the Capital One Arena. Left to right, Le Nhu Ngoc Tran, Whitman College, Ramal Moreland, JP Morgan, Don Cravins, CEO, NMSDC, Riley McGlynn, Sienna University, Amza Togore, Trinity College, Georgia Kogut, George Washington University On February 24th I attended an event that the interns at Creative Investment Research (Le Nhu Ngoc Tran, Whitman College, Riley McGlynn, Sienna University, Amza Togore, Trinity College, Georgia Kogut, George Washington University) helped put together. The event was hosted by Saalex Corporation at Capital One Arena during the Georgetown vs. Marquette basketball game. In attendance were individuals from different companies, including Don Cravins, President of the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), and Shannon Smith, Vice President of SAALEX.  Coordinating and designing this event was an important learning experience for us, as communication and collaboration were huge parts of the reason this event was so suc...