Blink

Who turns the wheel
And who throws the dice
On the day after tomorrow?
--Day After Tomorrow,
Tom Waits
____________

Oil escalates in price $10.75 a barrel in a single day earlier this month and nobody blinks. The head of Russia's Gazprom says look for $250 barrel soon. Corn tops $7.00 a bushel for the first time and this becomes a significant news item. So, we have come to expect petroleum prices to increase daily, but the price of corn surprises us?

All of our commodities are on an escalator ride, and we are getting a real world lesson on the web of life. The price of corn (feed) rises, then meat and dairy rises. Ditto petroleum. The price paid is not only direct but indirect. Bill McKibbon writes in today's WaPo about "the [clear] trend toward scarcity" and the rolling back of our frontier mentality (End of the Open Road.)

We spoke with a waitress this weekend in a Georgia restaurant from Cocoa Beach, Florida, where she and her husband owned a home and their family lived well on his income as a trucker. He recently lost the trucking job due to escalating costs and is now unemployed. They sold the house and she is currently the sole breadwinner. "You'll see me here from 10 til 8 most days."

Analysts are predicting $4.50 at the gas pumps before Summer's end, but it will be there before corn rises again. What Americans won't verbalize is their fears for tomorrow. We are not afraid of terrorism, we are afraid for our wallets, and the McCain/Obama roadshow is not playing that song.

It is a nice game of transference to focus on the wars abroad versus the battles at home. Terrorism is so antiseptic, in a way. Oh, unless you're over there in uniform trying to ferret THEM out.

One can natter on endlessly about matters which do not actually lacerate the skin or the soul. That is an intellectual exercise, twice removed. One can shake one's head ruefully and not feel a pinch. But what is not being said is that the other shoe has not dropped, and that we all know that oil prices are not going to stabilize.

Ranger predicts $8.00 gas within the next two years, if not sooner. These are the fears too dark to speak. It is easier to ignore and just hope it is a bad dream that will go away before it bites our nuts.

Through habituation and accommodation, the average consumer adjusts to these daily assaults. The WaPo ran an article yesterday on the concept of transaction utility. Many are going without basics, let alone iPods. When sheer existence is threatened, will anyone advocate for those so pressed?

The only bad dream that will go away is George W. Bush, but we will not get out of our nightmare anytime soon.

The reality is not a bad dream that can be left behind upon awakening from our collective Ambien-induced slumber.

--Jim and Lisa

Happy Day

The Sowers (1934), Thomas Hart Benton

Every time it rains it rains
Pennies from heaven.
Don't you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven
--Pennies from Heaven, Johnston/Burke

Isn't this a lovely day
To be caught in the rain?
--Isn't this a Lovely Day?, Irving Berlin

Gone like a Nixon file gone gone away
Gone like my landlord smile gone gone away
--Gone, John Hiatt
______________

(written at a truck stop)-- It is what passes for a happy day in America when you can fill up your gas tank and the price of petrol hasn't risen 5¢ per gallon since your last fill up. Ranger remembers when gas prices remained stable for years on end.

Ranger also marvels on a simple drive of 20 miles at the number of newly-closed businesses sporting For Sale signs. Also, the number of homes for sale, most with Reduced Price signs. Perhaps the most telling is the reduced number of 18-wheelers at the interstate truck stops.

In a discussion at the truck stop one of the long-haul truck drivers shared that he lost money on a recently signed contract before he even hauled the first load because of rising fuel costs. "You can't sign it (a contract) two weeks out now." He said he has five trucks and they are not on the road because they can't negotiate long-term contracts due to unstable fuel costs.

Another sign of the times can be had at your local pawn shop. Go in on a Friday night sometime and just feel. Yes, feel. And listen. The desperation is palpable. This is the New America. Overspent, overdrawn, underpaid and underemployed.

Talk to anybody who's not reading the Robb Report and is working for a living, and ask them their beliefs on where their life is heading; it is not optimistic.

Funny how the reports of Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page and the people can be so far apart.