Good Tuesday, Everyone.  Looks like we will have sun again and slightly warmer temps--somewhere in the low 80s.  Thanks, Kay.  The gardens really are doing pretty well.  I think my dissatisfaction with the gardens is more related to my own energy (or lack) than how the plants are doing.  As the old saying goes my 'get up and go has got up and gone.'  Oh, yeah--Kunstler is good and writes so much more sense than so many in our lamestream media.  And the prices are really baffling--at least the gas prices.  We have gotten used to (if not at all happy about) rising grocery prices.  But we just finished the holiday and summer driving 'season,' the gulf was quiet now that Isaac was gone, and the recent fires/explosions at three refineries long enough past that the price increases already in place so why a sudden $.25-.30 increase?  Overnight?

We have already shifted away from the morning news.  More than half of the content isn't really news--the Chicago teachers' strike continues and the sound bites haven't changed, 9/11 memorials which I am ignoring, the presidential contest continues--so why waste our time.  Besides, they don't provide the information we really want--like why the gas has gone up so much.

I have thought for some time now that our economy is a bundle of 'Catch 22' conditions that no one can control; but, of course, no central banker or politician (read presidential candidate) dares express that notion.  One of the stories on the broadcast 'news' this morning concerned the 'drop' in consumer debt (read credit card debt) which indicates a drop in consumer demand--at a time when everyone says we need more demand to spur the economy.  But all the experts also say we all have too much debt at all levels--individual, company, and governmental (local, state, and national.)  How in the world do you lower consumer debt without lowering consumer demand in an economy where incomes have stagnated and jobs are disappearing?  This little article gives some flavor of the same kind of problem.  All of the 'solutions' the central bankers continue to rely on simply aren't working as they have in the past or as theory says they should.  Hey, fellas, think it might be time to think outside the old box?