INTER CPA | Risk & Opportunity Monthly
Issue No. 9 | March – May 2026
“It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.” — Prime Minister Mark Carney, Davos 2026
At Inter CPA, we view risk and opportunity as two sides of the same coin. Each issue of this newsletter has tracked the accelerating pace of institutional change from the regulatory uncertainty documented in Issue No. 1, to the human risk framework explored in Issue No. 7, to the geopolitical rupture analyzed in Issue No. 8. In that last issue, we drew on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos address and Václav Havel’s metaphor of “the greengrocer’s sign” to argue that the rules-based international order is no longer a reliable operating assumption.
Spring 2026 does not merely confirm that assessment. It accelerates it on every front simultaneously.
The launch of Operation Epic Fury on February 28 sent global energy markets into turmoil. The GENIUS Act is reshaping the architecture of cross-border finance. The PHFFA policy has weaponized U.S. foreign aid, and the DOJ indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center has extended that weapon directly into civil society. Recent Supreme Court decisions have significantly narrowed the enforceability of the Voting Rights Act, shifting key protections away from federal oversight. For nonprofit and community-based organizations, this represents a structural change in how political representation and advocacy must be approached. And a disturbing pattern of political violence, better understood as a public health crisis, is sending a signal that finance leaders cannot afford to ignore.
Five risks. Five simultaneous opportunities. All converging into a single question for every mission-driven organization:
Are you still placing the sign in the window, or are you leading from truth?
This issue provides the framework you need to answer that question for your organization, your clients, and your community.
Risk #1: The Hormuz Crisis and the Inflation Shock
On February 28, 2026, U.S. and Israeli forces launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran, initiating the largest energy supply shock in modern history. Within days, the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which approximately 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) transits, was effectively closed. Daily maritime transits collapsed from an average of 120 per day to fewer than 7.
The immediate consequences for finance leaders are severe:
- Brent crude oil surged from approximately $71 to over $110 per barrel — a 55.6% increase.
- Natural gas (Dutch TTF) rose approximately 59%, driven by halts in Qatari LNG exports.
- Fertilizer (granular urea) increased roughly 34% due to LNG feedstock shortages, threatening cascading impacts on global food production precisely at the start of the Northern Hemisphere planting season.
- U.S. gasoline average prices rose approximately 30% and diesel 23%, compressing margins across logistics-dependent nonprofits and supply chains throughout Latin America.
Before the conflict, U.S. consumer price inflation was projected to fall to 2.6% by year-end 2026. The oil shock now pushes that projection toward 3% or higher. The Federal Reserve, which had been on a path toward rate cuts, is now expected to hold at approximately 3.6% or consider increases to anchor inflation expectations.
The Human Cost Behind the Numbers
Before continuing with the financial analysis, this report must pause.
On the first day of Operation Epic Fury, among the nearly 900 strikes carried out across Iran, one struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh school. More than 170 students and teachers were killed. They were girls. They were in class.
No strategic objective, no barrel of oil recovered, no basis point of inflation contained justifies that loss. It is a loss that cannot be calculated and must not be forgotten.
In Issue No. 4, we analyzed the human cost of policy decisions, the 14 million additional global deaths projected from USAID defunding, and the 4.5 million children among them. In Issue No. 7, we explored the danger of leaders who believe their own morality is a sufficient guardrail. The strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh school is what happens when “godlike technology” ( in E.O. Wilson’s phrase) is deployed by institutions that have not yet developed the moral architecture to restrain it.
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology” – Edward O. Wilson, debate at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Cambridge, Mass., 9 September 2009
For finance leaders and mission-driven organizations, the obligation is clear: we cannot treat war as a line item. Every budget stress test we run, every scenario plan we build, every investment decision we make in the shadow of this conflict must carry with it the acknowledgment that the real cost is being paid by people who had nothing to do with it.
We call on all organizations to support the International Committee of the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, the World Food Program, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in their response to civilian casualties across the region.
No military objective is worth more than a child’s life.
✅ Opportunity: Scenario Planning and Anti-Inflationary Capital Allocation
- Conduct immediate fiscal stress tests that incorporate energy price shock scenarios (+30%, +50%, +75% fuel cost) across your operating budget.
- Consult your fiduciary financial advisor about rebalancing capital allocations toward anti-inflationary assets. (Inter CPA does not provide investment advice; please engage your trusted financial advisor.)
- Review all long-term contracts and grant agreements for force majeure clauses and cost-of-service adjustment mechanisms.
Risk #2: The Weaponization of Civil Society’s Operating Environment
What began as a funding crisis has become a legal one. Three overlapping developments now define the threat landscape for nonprofit and civil society organizations in the United States.
The PHFFA: Foreign Aid as Ideological Weapon
In February 2026, the Trump administration enacted a sweeping expansion of the “global gag rule” under the Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance (PHFFA) policy, applying ideological conditionality to nearly $39.8 billion in non-military assistance. Unlike prior iterations focused on reproductive health, the 2026 PHFFA’s reach is structural:
- Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance — Prohibits any abortion-related activities, including counseling and referrals, even when using non-U.S. funds.
- Combating Gender Ideology — Prohibits promotion of gender-affirming care or social transitions in any program touching U.S. funding.
- Combating Discriminatory Equity Ideology — Restricts programs utilizing DEI frameworks or educational materials.
Combined with U.S. withdrawal from 66 international organizations — including the WHO (which lost 16–18% of its operating revenue overnight) — the nonprofit sector is being asked to absorb global health, humanitarian, and civil society duties it was never resourced to carry alone.
The SPLC Indictment: When Advocacy Becomes a Crime
On April 21, the Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center — a 55-year-old civil rights institution — on 11 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment centers on the SPLC’s decades-long practice of paying informants to infiltrate violent extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations — a practice that was public knowledge since the 1980s and was routinely shared with federal law enforcement, including the FBI itself.
The SPLC is fighting back vigorously. Its attorneys allege the grand jury was “actively weaponized” and that senior DOJ officials made false and prejudicial public statements. Multiple legal experts, including a retired federal judge, have publicly questioned whether the case will survive to trial.
What matters for every finance leader reading this: if a 55-year-old civil rights organization can be indicted for practices it conducted openly, in documented partnership with law enforcement, for decades — then the legal exposure for any advocacy-focused nonprofit is no longer theoretical. In Issue No. 6, we wrote that CIVICUS had placed the U.S. on its democratic backsliding watchlist and that the administration had characterized nonprofits as “enemies.” This is that warning, converted into a federal indictment.
The Voting Rights Act: The Judicial Dimension
On April 29, the Supreme Court, 6-3 along partisan lines, effectively completed what Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent called the “now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” The ruling makes it nearly impossible to challenge racial vote dilution in federal court, paving the way for what analysts project will be the largest reduction in Black and Latino congressional representation since Reconstruction.
For organizations in Puerto Rico and across Latin American communities in the United States, this is not an abstract legal development. The political channels through which your mission-served communities advocate for housing, health, education, immigration, and environmental policy have been materially narrowed. Social and Relationship Capital — one of the Six Capitals on which long-term organizational resilience depends — has just been structurally weakened at the institutional level.
✅ Opportunity: Structural Diversification and Legal Preparedness
- Audit your governance documents now. Review donor disclosures, program descriptions, grant agreements, and staff policies for compliance exposure before a regulator or grand jury does it for you.
- Pivot to private foundation funding: Gates, Ford, MacArthur, Freedom Together, and the Marguerite Casey Foundation are accelerating disbursements. European and multilateral donors are issuing new RFPs explicitly targeting organizations displaced from U.S. funding.
- Engage state-level political infrastructure: Several states have enacted their own voting rights protections. State-level legislative engagement and cross-sector coalitions are now the primary defensive mechanisms available.
- Strengthen cross-sector coalitions: As documented in Issue No. 5, litigation coordinated through coalitions remains an offensive strategy. Over 3,700 organizations have already signed solidarity letters.
- Maintain radical transparency: Public trust — Social and Relationship Capital — is now a front-line strategic asset. Transparent reporting to donors, beneficiaries, and the public is the competitive advantage of organizations that will still be trusted when the crisis passes.
Risk #3: The Inflation Tax and the $38.8 Trillion Reality
As of February 2026, U.S. federal debt reached $38.8 trillion. In 2025, net interest payments became the third-largest government outlay, trailing only Social Security and Medicare. The “One Big Beautiful Bill”, analyzed in Issue No. 4, is projected to add $3 trillion more over the next decade. The initial cost of Operation Epic Fury added another $25 billion in unbudgeted emergency spending, with an estimated supplemental request of $200 billion.
This fiscal architecture creates what we have consistently called the “Inflation Tax”: a hidden levy on the most vulnerable populations served by nonprofits, while simultaneously starving the safety net programs upon which those populations rely. Organizations operating on fixed-grant cycles find their operating margins evaporating in real time , not because of poor management, but because of policy arithmetic.
The Social Security trust fund, already facing depletion between 2031 and 2034, faces additional pressure from populist tax proposals (the “no tax on tips” debate analyzed in Issue No. 2) that widen its funding gap without structural reform. Holistic fiscal reform , raising the tipped minimum wage, modernizing payroll systems, and protecting the Social Security funding base is not a political position. It is a financial sustainability imperative for the entire social ecosystem.
✅ Opportunity: Reserves, Scenario Planning, and Strategic Tax Design
- Build unrestricted reserves targeting 6–12 months of operating expenses. Organizations with liquidity resilience have strategic options; those without have only reactions.
- Integrate dynamic scenario planning into your annual budget cycle – model inflation at 3%, 5%, and 7%.
Risk #4: Blockchain, Fintech, and the GENIUS Act
The Iran War has introduced significant volatility across global markets. Despite this, Bitcoin surged toward $74,000 in mid-March 2026 as institutional buyers used Bitcoin ETFs as a hedge against inflation and sanctions risk — a structural shift that reflects how digital assets are increasingly being treated as macro-level treasury instruments rather than purely speculative ones.
The war has also accelerated the weaponization of financial infrastructure: SWIFT exclusions, sanctions regimes, and payment rail restrictions can sever cross-border operations instantly. For organizations with partners in Latin America, and other regions dependent on stable remittance and transfer infrastructure, this is a treasury management risk, not a technology trend.
✅ Opportunity: GENIUS Act Compliance and Payment Stablecoin Integration
The passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act) on July 18, 2025, established the first federal framework for payment stablecoins. Key provisions:
- 100% reserve backing with liquid assets (USD, short-term Treasuries), ensuring 1:1 parity.
- Monthly public audits of reserve certifications, building institutional trust.
- A new regulated entity — the Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuer (PPSI) — licensed by the OCC, preempting fragmented state-level licensing.
- Enforcement capability (freeze, seize, or burn tokens) aligned with AML and sanctions compliance.
Payment stablecoins now serve as a foundational rail for cross-border B2B payments, reducing settlement times from days to seconds — a development that is particularly relevant for Latin America. For conservation and agriculture nonprofits, tokenized carbon credits through Regenerative Finance (ReFi) represent an emerging pathway to unrestricted revenue.
Strategic actions: explore PPSI licensure, develop multi-rail payment capabilities, maintain diversified treasury management, and prioritize KYC and AML compliance above all.
Risk #5: The Public Health Crisis of Institutional Trust Collapse
On April 25, 2026, a 31-year-old man attempted to force his way past a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives. One Secret Service officer was shot and survived. This was the third apparent attempt on the President’s life since 2024.
At Inter CPA, we do not frame this as a political story. We frame it as a public health issue and one with direct implications for mission-driven organizations.
In Issue No. 5, we named the “relationship recession”: the phenomenon in which technology-driven social isolation amplifies mental health crises and erodes the connective tissue of community. In Issue No. 7, we explored the Fraud Triangle’s third element, rationalization, as the element that lives in the human heart and cannot be addressed by internal controls alone. These two threads meet in April 2026. When people lose faith that institutional systems can produce change, the third element of the Fraud Triangle, the psychological justification for extreme action, becomes easier to access. Not just in financial fraud. In everything.
This is a governance and operational risk for organizations whose programs depend on a functioning civic environment. It is also a mission opportunity.
Organizations that invest in community mental health infrastructure, rebuild institutional trust at the local level, and create visible pathways for people to participate meaningfully in change, through advocacy, volunteerism, civic engagement, are directly addressing the conditions that produce despair-driven radicalization. That is not soft programming. It is structural prevention work with measurable community impact.
✅ Opportunity: Mission as Social Infrastructure
- Invest in community mental health and civic engagement programs as core strategy, not add-ons.
- Support initiatives that make democratic participation tangible and effective at the local and state level particularly in the wake of the Voting Rights Act ruling.
- Communicate organizational impact clearly and visibly — organizations that demonstrate that their work actually changes people’s lives are contributing to the evidence base that collective action works.
- Build internal staff mental health and resilience infrastructure. The organizations that serve communities in crisis are staffed by people in those same communities. Workforce wellbeing is not a benefit. It is a sustainability requirement.
Strategic Framework: The Six Capitals of Resilience (May 2026)
Every risk in this issue has a corresponding opportunity — but only for organizations that respond structurally. The Six Capitals Framework provides the integrated lens required:
| Capital | May 2026 Risk | May 2026 Opportunity |
|---|---|---|
| Financial | Inflation tax; budget erosion; funding concentration | Revenue diversification; stablecoins; anti-inflationary treasury strategy |
| Manufactured | Cybersecurity gaps; legacy ERP systems; supply chain disruption | AI-enabled automation; blockchain payment rails; digital transformation |
| Intellectual | Ungoverned AI adoption; data vulnerability; governance gaps | GENIUS Act compliance; AI ethics frameworks; impact reporting |
| Human | Workforce fatigue; mental health crisis; ethical leadership gaps | Staff resilience investment; moral courage culture; Fraud Triangle management |
| Social & Relationship | VRA ruling; SPLC indictment; donor contraction; institutional distrust | Cross-sector coalitions; state-level engagement; radical transparency; community trust |
| Natural | Energy price shock; Hormuz blockade; green transition rollbacks | Carbon-credit systems; blended finance; ESG-aligned sustainability reporting |
Strategic plans that do not name all six capitals will not govern them. If a capital is absent from your plan, it is absent from your governance.
The Moral Dimension: Leading from Truth
The threads of this report converge in a single place: the question of what it means to lead with integrity when institutions designed to protect organizations and communities are being systematically dismantled.
The SPLC indictment is a test of whether civil rights advocacy can survive criminalization. The Voting Rights Act ruling is a test of whether minority communities can sustain political power through state-level infrastructure when federal protection is gone. The pattern of political violence is a test of whether civic organizations can rebuild the trust that prevents individuals from concluding that no legitimate pathway remains.
The civilian casualties of this war, including the 170 girls killed at Shajareh Tayyebeh school, demand that finance leaders name the human cost alongside the financial cost. Not as a courtesy. As an obligation.
Why? Because ignoring the human cost does not eliminate it; it transfers it. Every life lost represents years of economic productivity that will never arrive, families that will not form, communities that will absorb grief without the resources to do so, and health and social support systems that will carry the consequences for decades. Estimating the economic value of 170 children’s lives is ethically problematic. But ignoring it is too. Accounting silence is not neutrality; it is a decision with real consequences for the most vulnerable populations this sector claims to serve.
And beyond the cost, there is the question of accountability. Who answers for these deaths? The international frameworks of humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute, and the mechanisms of the International Criminal Court, as well as the federal courts of the United States through the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act, exist precisely to answer that question. Their systematic weakening in recent years is not a topic foreign to finance. It is a global governance risk. Organizations that operate in conflict environments, manage humanitarian funds, or work with displaced populations have a direct interest in ensuring those mechanisms function. Impunity has an economic cost. And it carries a moral cost that no balance sheet can absorb.
In Issue No. 7, I wrote about the Fraud Triangle and the danger of relying on “my own morality” as the only guardrail. I said that what we need are systems, cultures, and communities that help us be better than we would be alone. That observation has never been more urgent.
For finance leaders, leading from truth in May 2026 means:
- Name the reality of your organization’s vulnerability — funding concentration, governance exposure, energy costs, institutional isolation — before a crisis names it for you.
- Build strength at home first — a strong balance sheet, diversified revenue, and documented governance are the foundations of strategic autonomy.
- Act collectively — the organizations that formed coalitions in 2025 have legal, financial, and relational options in 2026 that isolated organizations do not.
- Protect your ethical infrastructure — whistleblower programs, conflict-of-interest policies, independent audits, and board-level ethics oversight are not compliance costs. They are the competitive advantage of organizations that will still be trusted when this passes.
- Invest in community — organizations that are genuinely embedded in the lives of the people they serve are the hardest to dismantle, the most trusted by funders, and the most resilient under pressure.
“La palabra convence, pero el ejemplo arrastra.” Words convince, but example compels.
About Inter CPA
Inter CPA is committed to financial sustainability for mission-driven organizations. We believe that social enterprises, nonprofits, and fintech companies navigating today’s complex environment deserve rigorous, independent financial analysis — grounded in ethics, informed by practice, and oriented toward long-term resilience.
This newsletter is published as a public resource for finance leaders, board members, and organizational strategists working at the intersection of finance, technology, and social impact.
Editorial Note: The governance of artificial intelligence in armed conflict contexts, including the controversy surrounding the use of Anthropic’s Claude in Operation Epic Fury, the dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon over guardrails against autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance, and the broader question of who sets the ethical limits on AI in war, will be the central subject of Issue No. 10. It is a discussion that deserves depth, because of the lessons it holds for finance leaders.
Warm regards,
Jesús Manuel Pizarro Rodríguez, CPA
Versión en español disponible en: https://inter.cpa/blog/
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- Inter CPA | Risk & Opportunity Series, Issues No. 1–8 (2025–2026). https://inter.cpa/blog/
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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this report are those of the author in his personal capacity and do not represent the views, positions, or opinions of any current or former employer or affiliated organization. This report is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial, or investment advice. Readers should consult their qualified professional advisors before making any financial, legal, or strategic decisions.
