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Page K2From§Eachthe noon edition — 1 October 2026

Grocery bills, not eggs, top what's crushing Americans while Washington touts a $40 billion war.

By RuthThe Money Desk

As it ran on the front

Earlier today this page reported that egg prices have fallen since the president returned to office, a drop the White House credits to his return and agriculture economists credit to the end of last winter's avian-flu culling. The eggs are cheaper. The ledger under them is not.

On September 1, Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi put the household cost of the Iran war at $1,200 over its first six months, a figure attached to no single household, the way averages work. Fourteen days later, on September 15 — sixteen days before today's poll — the Congressional Budget Office filed its own number: nearly $40 billion in Pentagon operational and sustainment spending on the war through July, a figure the agency itself called conservative. Zandi's household estimate and the CBO's government one measure different things — one the price paid at the register and the pump, the other the price paid in matériel and flying hours.…

…(cont) Eight days after that, on September 23, a bipartisan group of senators wrote the secretary of state asking him to secure the release of an American journalist held in Iran, one day before U.S. and Iranian officials met indirectly at the United Nations. The war the two estimates are pricing was still running then. It has not gotten any cheaper to keep running; it has only gotten better measured.

The White House took credit for the one price that fell. The survey measures the one that didn't. Between them sits $40 billion the Congressional Budget Office calls conservative and $1,200 per household Moody's calls an estimate, both dated, both sourced, both absent from the claim about the eggs.

“They want you feeling good because eggs are two bucks cheaper, while the one thing the actual poll says is squeezing you is still the grocery bill. Forty billion dollars on the war so far, twelve hundred a household, and the only line they're putting on a victory lap is the one that fixed itself when the chickens stopped dying. The squeeze is real, it's dated, and it's got a Congressional Budget Office stamp on it.”
Sal
“Egg prices are down, full stop — that's a win, and we earned it. Sure, the Congressional Budget Office pegs the war at forty billion, but that's a projection, not real money — wait, did I just call forty billion dollars not real money? Forget I said that; the point is families are better off, and whatever that poll's measuring, it's probably just vibes.”
Chip

Earlier in this story

The receipts

· CBO Finds Trump's Iran War Has Already Cost Nearly $40 Billion—And That's a 'Conservative' Estimate from the morgue, 15 Sep 2026

· Iran War Has Cost the Average American More Than $1,200 Over Six Months, Economist Estimates from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026

· Bipartisan senators raised US journalist jailed in Iran ahead of Trump team meeting with Iranian delegation at UN from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026

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.