Reader warning: This is a good-news/bad-news/good-news blog. First the good news. As Reuters reported recently, the stock market has been on a "steady" climb, and it now stands to make "fresh records, extending a rally that has seen the S&P 500 gain 13 percent this year and nearly 90 percent from its March 2020 low." A major rally is also taking place in US government bonds since their selloff in Q1, "with the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield . . . recently at 1.46 percent, a whopping 30 basis points (bps) below Q1. 

What's more, CoStar predicts that interest rates are likely to remain at bargain-basement levels through 2023. 

Let's bask for a moment in the joys of the New Normal. OK, basking is done. Now for the bad news. The "i" word–as in "inflation,"–is beginning to crop up in conversations, certainly among the members of the Federal Reserve Policy-Setting Committee, and CoStar states that, "13 members noted the risks to inflation in the core personal consumption expenditure price index," and they actually worry that inflation could settle over the land at a much higher level than has been previously reported.