Reply #74: Morning Marketeers..... [View All]

[AnneD]

:donut: and lurkers. I took a brief week's time off to rest a bit and take care of a few odds and ends. As a result, I was out and about town at odd hours. What I saw was very revealing.
The city buses are backed-more so than I have ever seen them. Even off peak hours are crowded. In fact Metro, who already had 75 new buses ordered will put them on the park and ride routes (which have been SRO for a while now). I see many more bike riders and families walking, and that is a good thing. At hubbies work, they will be giving them a bit of an increase in pay to offset the gas cost. I am sure with the flooding in Iowa, corn, soybeans, and ethanol will shoot up. I can only imagine what the first hurricane in the gulf will do to it.

But the strangest thing is as it get closer to 9 or 10 pm here in Houston. I live right off Main St., near the medical center. There has always been traffic at all hours. But now the streets seem to roll up after 8:30. If I had to compare traffic levels, I would say we are to 1978-79 levels...about the time of the oil embargo. I save most of my travel and shopping until later at night because it is cooler so it creeps me out a bit-like some sort of SF movie where most of the population is gone-a post apocalyptic scenario. Gas is pretty much at $4 or touching it. I found a spot where it is 3.85 so I fill up there when I run an errand out there. I am still heading out to church on Sunday and combine it with a farmer's market run, but our driving patterns have changed. I have a schedule now and do things on different days to accommodate my schedule. I have cleaned out my car and trunk and just hold the necessities to lighten the load so to speak. Now I know if I am doing that and I am doing better than most folks, I can only guess what others are doing.

I am bummed out a bit. We were thinking about retiring to Iowa, had even been looking at some nice old homes in Ceder Rapids. Guess that might be off my list now. I don't trust those 100 or 500 year flood plain maps-I guess living in Houston has jaded me a bit. With the climate changes, these things may happen more often. Well, I guess I will still be searching for a nice geologically stable area, although I was quite take with Iowa.

I did get to follow some of the WS shenanigans this last week. They keep ginning things up for those sucker rallies. I hope you folks all have stop losses on your stocks by now. I still believe in my heart of hearts that we will go lower, this is a recession that has the potential to go into a depression and if God is just, the Bush Admin will go out with at least egg on their face (my preference is tar and feathers though).

Happy hunting and watch out for the bears.