It's trucking, stupid.........

Seems to be a lot of food being bought this year. I spent about 500 so far. Shelves at the store are being emptied. Maybe we can't get the stuff. Remains to be seen if we have shortages.

However, I do know our sales have been down from last year over all.

Since Walmart dominates in the area it is the bellwether we have to compare with. Unemployment going up in the area and we ain't going to hire for a long time. I think we are over staffed now. Also, I don't expect any bonuses for the year.

So far the local grocery store, 30 miles from Wally World, has plenty. We'll see how long it last.

It's a thin long line of trucks that feed us.

The Fraud of the Great Moderation

We're headed, it seems, toward a fall "crunch time," and that crunching sound will not be of cheez doodles and taco chips consumed on the sofas of America. I think we're heading into a season of hoarding. As the presidential campaign moves into its final round, Americans may be hard-up for both food and gasoline. On the oil scene, the next event on the horizon is not just higher prices but shortages. Chances are, they will occur first in the Southeast states because oil exports from Mexico and Venezuela feeding the Gulf of Mexico refineries are down more than 30 percent over 2007.

Perhaps more ominous is the discontent on the trucking scene. Truckers are going broke in droves, unable to carry on their business while getting paid $2000 for loads that cost them $3000 to deliver. In Europe last week, enraged truckers paralyzed the food distribution networks of Spain and Portugal. The passivity of U.S. truckers so far has been a striking feature of the general zombification of American life. They might continue to just crawl off one-by-one and die. But it's also possible that, at some point, they'll mount a Night-of-the-Living-Dead offensive and take their vengeance out on "the system" that has brought them to ruin. America has only about a three-day supply of food in any of its supermarkets.