Are we looking at some 'bad times' coming up? Nuh uh you think.

I'm certainly no economist, but I am aware of what is going on at the fuel pump, at the grocery store, how much the utilities cost to run our house on a monthly basis. I am aware that my trash hauler will have to raise his cost for the service because he is losing money every time he takes his truck out on the road (he makes less than last month because he has to fill that tank with higher and higher priced gas. All suppliers of goods that we use are in the same pickle, so more and more of the prices we pay will cost us more next month for the same amount.

My wife and I talk about this almost daily. We are retired and can to some extent control our financial destiny insofar as using the car less. We can cut down on our food budget and my wife is a whiz at making a feast out of small quantities of raw material. After all we raised three children on my, compared to today's salaries, measly pittance I brought home. We have two trips we have to make this year. Our daughter is having her first baby and we would like to be there for that, but after that we have the option to put the car in the garage and use it as infrequently as we can.

How are the people who exist on the fringes today going to exist in a decent manner tomorrow when those relentless prices continue to rise?

Would it not be wonderful if we had a president who could go on the television and speak to us and try to explain exactly what is going wrong, what has to be done to fix it, and this is the biggie, we believed what he was telling us, ala Franklin Roosevelt in the thirties.