It ain't just gas and stocks hitting rock bottom

How 'bout "60 Minutes" tonight? Two segments on the Saudi oil machine, and not a minute of it seemed frivolous or overly explainy, at least not to this casual observer. Especially the kicker at the end, where the Saudis promise they're going to use their vast oil wealth to become pioneers in the creation and export of solar energy as well. You can bet against them; I won't.

So we all know the price of gas is way down ($1.37/gal at Costco here). And if you read TVB you know the price of Blu-ray players is down ($128 for a late-first-generation machine at Walmart). But every day, it seems, I get another reminder that these are only the tip of the iceberg. Here are two I picked up this weekend, one from a media outlet, the other inspired by my Sunday School class, which is reading Barbara Kingsolver's terrific book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle .

• Remember the red-hot metals and papers market? How China was driving up the price of raw materials by bogarting all the recyclables they could get their hands on? No more: the recycling biz is facing "an abrupt slowdown" as demand and prices crater. I suppose this might help newspapers but ... maybe not.

• Remember the sky-high price of corn, driven by demand for ethanol? Gone. Corn closed on Friday at just $3.09 a bushel -- better than in the bad old sub-two-dollar days of old, but less than half the price that America's biofuel future was commanding in July. What do you suppose is happening to all of those ethanol plants that went online in the past year or two? Uh-huh.

I think if you start to pile up examples like these you can understand why everyone's a little on edge these days.