Report on Our Economy

So the gloomy report of declining sales seems to stump our nation’s economists. Retail sales fell 0.4 percent in April from the previous month, much worse than economists had predicted, they were hoping for at least flat sales. Then when comparing sales with the previous year, April sales dived 10.1 percent. The Commerce Department also revised its earlier estimate for March sales from a drop of 1.1 percent to 1.3 percent. And it seems the American housing market also continues to struggle as well.

Why are they so befuddled? Gasoline prices have shot up over the past few weeks. In my area they have now gone from $1.85/gal. to $2.23/gal. a 17% increase in a little over 2 weeks. At the current cost, this adds about $400 to my yearly commuting cost. Grocery prices have continued to climb; people are still losing their jobs. They are surprised the tax cut in the stimulus package that was just instituted did not do more to help stimulate people to spend more – a paltry $13 roughly per week just about covers the rising cost of gas and groceries.

As I mentioned before, this is a long range project to set things right. The market is still correcting itself and all the bailout money dished out was not well thought out. Now you have GM ready to file for bankruptcy and part of their exit strategy is to job out more work to China and Mexico, which means that the American Auto workers who lost their jobs and others, who will be losing them, will be permanently out of work. These workers will have to be retrained to be able to do other work, it may take a few years to retrain many of them who have done nothing else but work in the Auto Industry. So GM takes our tax money and now wants to eliminate thousands of US jobs. Of course we are partly to blame, going to these other countries the labor cost are much less at under $10/hour compared to some in the industry at $50/hour. Why can’t they work out a deal with the auto workers in this country and look for more streamline ways to manufacture the cars. They ripped off the American people and our government is letting them get away with it. After all it is you and I that will be repaying their debt.

So when will the economy rebound and start moving in the right direction? I am still monitoring the cost of my razor blades, they have not gone down any and they don’t even put them on sale. So I guess we are still in this for the long haul. I am projecting in the 3rd quarter of next year we will see some noticeable movement, based on the history of recessions and of course my opinion – my explosion of thought!