Hello, and welcome to another Tuesday of monitoring our ever-changing economy, or as I like to think of it, “productive doomscrolling.”

The war in Iran has ripple effects throughout this economy, far beyond the price of crude oil. As our reporter Kristin Schwab explains in this video , gas prices, mortgages and even your next vacation could be getting more expensive soon.

 

My colleague Caleigh Wells looked closer at that last bit. Plus, we’ve got some food news and an exploration of why it’s difficult to combine two streaming services. — Catie McCarthy, digital producer

If you’ve got any big summer trips planned, like the kind that includes a long-haul flight, you better book your tickets now. Airfares are climbing as you read this.

 

The problem is simple: As the price of oil goes up because of the war in the Middle East, so does the price of jet fuel. But the way airlines are responding is not quite so simple.

 

Last time we saw a spike in jet fuel prices like this was at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Fuel prices and airfare went up, but people paid up anyway.

 

“Because during that time, there was just such a crazy level of demand for travel. It was during that, you know, revenge travel period,” said Meghna Maharishi, an airline reporter at travel industry news outlet Skift.

 

Back then, the world was coming out of the pandemic, she said. Consumers were craving to go somewhere — anywhere! — with a bunch of saved-up money burning holes in their pockets. Today, demand for travel is still elevated, but not that elevated.

 

“So I think those increases are going to probably feel a little bit more painful,” Maharishi said.

 

That pain is partly exacerbated by higher oil prices, which mean less disposable income for consumers, per independent airline industry analyst Robert Mann.

 

“Notably, leisure customers have to decide, ‘Well, am I going to pay to light the house and heat the house and fill the fuel tank on the cars, or am I going to go buy airline tickets to see Mickey Mouse?’” he said.

How do CEOs feel about the economy? Just like the rest of us, they’re thinking a lot about AI, according to a recent survey from KPMG. Seventy-nine of the 100 CEOs interviewed said they’re spending at least 5% of their budget on AI this year.

The bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery is over, but Paramount has only just begun sweating the details of its proposed merger. CEO David Ellison said he plans to combine each company’s marquee streaming service, but that’s a lot more difficult than it sounds.

 

Paramount+ is available in fewer countries than HBO Max, for one thing, so there are rights to sort out. And every streamer has its own tech stack, which is why rewinding Amazon Prime is so annoying on my smart TV, but Netflix isn’t. You can’t just mash them together.

 

The whole thing is a tricky coding and billing puzzle, which is why some experts told the Hollywood Reporter you might end up with a bundle, rather than one unified app. Great.