The Federal Reserve is expected to raise its benchmark rate another quarter point this week, and the financial press is busy selling you on the upside—conveniently skipping who actually profits when borrowing costs stay high and your dollar buys less.

Here's the stakes: inflation is still running at 3.4% annually according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, well above the Fed's own 2% target. Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh signaled more hikes at Jackson Hole, and the CME FedWatch Tool now puts the odds of a quarter-point increase at 90%. Translation: the cost of your mortgage, auto loan, and credit card debt keeps climbing, and relief isn't coming.

CNBC framed the story around portfolio strategy, quoting LPL Financial's chief fixed income strategist Lawrence Gillum celebrating bond yields in the 5% to 6% range—rates he admits "10 years ago would have been unheard of." A 1-year Treasury that paid 0.6% in September 2016 now yields 4.3%. A 10-year Treasury jumped from 1.7% to nearly 5%. If you have a million dollars to park in bonds, that's a windfall. If you're a working American trying to finance a home or keep a small business afloat, that's an anchor.

Fortune, meanwhile, published what amounts to a consumer guide to certificates of deposit at major banks—Chase, Bank of America, Citibank—pitching the convenience of keeping all your banking under one roof. The piece notes that online banks like Capital One tend to offer better rates than the brick-and-mortar giants, and explains CD laddering as a strategy. Useful, maybe, if you have excess cash to lock away. But it's a telling frame: the best-case scenario for an ordinary saver is shopping around for a slightly better lockup rate at an institution that's still making far more lending your money back to you.

What neither outlet bothers to mention: banks profit from the spread between what they pay you on deposits and what they charge on loans. When rates rise, that spread often widens. Big banks reported record net interest income in recent quarters for a reason. The higher-for-longer environment isn't an accident—it's a wealth transfer from borrowers to lenders, from Main Street to Wall Street, dressed up as inflation-fighting discipline.

Gillum told CNBC the old expectation of aggressive rate cuts "hasn't happened, nor do we think it will happen." He's right. The question nobody in the financial press is asking: who asked for this regime, and who's paying for it?

The people celebrating 5% yields aren't the ones choosing between groceries and gas. They're the ones already holding capital. Everyone else just gets the bill.