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.

Comments

[radiomankc]

Scary, ain't it? I was just thinking as I went for carryout tonight, how even the early Sunday evening parkinglots were pretty sparce... in front of Best Buy(!!!), ToysRUs and I didn't even have to walk far to a popular restaurant.

I'm not sure if vastly more are out of work than I thought... or if words like Obama saying (Sunday) it's gonna get a lot worse and so people are too spooked to buy presents. I know our family's decided to cut way, way back, and we're working.

Glad gas is cheaper...thats been the only break... but ya know, I'm still suspicious that the price fell only for one reason. Because some hidden hand wants us to forget about electric cars and conservation. Low prices might do that. But we still need to do it. We need a new car but I'm not buying until I see what the industry does about fuel efficiency.

I even noticed inventory in car dealer lots is lower. Somethin's up, Aaron. And I don't feel very good about it! I'm also sorry so many of your good colleagues have lost their jobs at the Star. I hear its' happening all over town...and that's the problem with a recession.

Everyone loses heart, even those who are working. Because they're not feeling too secure these days. That's enough not to splurge and that makes retail even softer!

Oh my. Where's GWB telling us to SPEND?

[Alena]

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Alena

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[Clif]

Here’s another reminder of low prices that I encountered. I recently sold an old clunker to a salvage yard and learned that it was worth half the price offered last summer. One good thing about the current depressed scrap metal prices is that there should now be fewer instances of copper and aluminum being stolen from electrical utility grids. There should also me fewer cases of stolen manhole covers.