Rocks and Hard Places

The observation here is that people - the average Joe - is getting caught not between one rock and one hard place but a veritable field of rocks and hard places.  Many of us lived with the optimism that when one door shuts another is sure to open and when it didn't, immediately, we hung to our faith that God always provides a way.  Lots of people now think God is tossing out a few extra "test rocks" to sound out our mettle...a few extra boulders to separate the weak from the strong.

I watched with complete fascination a segment on CNBC just a few minutes ago as an "expert" tried to explain why the stock market went up nearly 1.7% yesterday and the price of a barrel of oil went up even more.  Usually stocks rise as oil prices go down, not up.  Midpoint of the "explanation" of how things work, was that over-supply of oil meant that producers had to charge more to make up for the glut....yes I know...that makes no sense. He went on to say that at $150/barrel, we could easily handle the increase without disturbing the values driving the market.

The "expert" further explained that to the consumer, $4.00/gallon gas was no burden on anyone he knew and since the stock market was booming, and corporate profits were so good, our economy could easily afford it.  After fainting dead away I read a little story in our local paper about how the price of gas was affecting local merchants.  The grit of the article rests in where we live.  Unlike big cities that grow up on crossroads, we live pretty much at the far point of two roads where they dead end on the east part of Long Island.  One doesn't "drive through here" on the way to going "there".  You either come here or you don't so in reality we are the end of the line...there is no "next stop" for the delivery truck.

The bus service to the city has the monopoly on mass transit options (for those of you who like buses) so the majority of "visitors" either come by car or don't come at all. Traffic counts are down about 40% in the last couple months, year on year. Delivery trucks have added 15-20% surcharges for fuel.  People who have monthly fuel oil contracts at a set rate have seen them double. The electric company has added 17% and hamburger costs $4.00/lb, milk is $4.40 a gallon.

Our little rocks are made up of these things - these insignificant increases that if they came at us one at a time it would be OK but they come at us like a spilled bag of marbles on a cement floor.  We full well understand that the politicians are horribly out of touch and don't get it.  Now we have a whole group of folks who take a good long look at the situation and don't get it either and these are the folks who hold sway over a lot of the business community and how it thinks.  Warren Buffet notes that his secretary pays a higher percentage in taxes than he does.  He shakes his head in wonderment.  The real problem past that basic unfairness is that they both eat the same number of meals, put the same gas in their cars, get electricity from the same wires and what is a pittance to one is a fortune to the other. The secretary shakes his/her head in frustration.

That is our rock and a hard place in case anyone wants to talk about it.  It is the barrage of rocks being thrown at the average Joe.  If this were God's test of our faith that better times come out of such trials by fire then I think an awful lot of folks would buckle up and fight it out.  When, however, we find that a lot of this may be set in motion, this avalanche of rocks, by a few back room oil traders speculating on oil futures and a bunch of economic wags out there putting up lame explanations on the hope that the peasants won't riot - that is quite another thing. Quite another indeed.