$54...

Mark just emailed me and told me that it took $54 to fill our gas tank today. Fifty-four dollars. How is this OK? The average gas price today (2/29/08) is $3.169. Last month, the average was $2.939 and a year ago it was $2.409. So we have gone up almost a dollar in the last year. Actually it will go up over a dollar (and more) in the next couple of months. Today, the price for a barrel of oil has reached a record high of $103. I remember when it was high at $76 a barrel and that was just last summer. Now are you going to tell me that people's pay rates have been increased as well? I think not. So what is the problem here?

According to Bush, nothing. We are not heading for a recession:

"We've acted robustly and now it's time to determine whether or not this programme will actually work," Bush said, referring to a $168 billion stimulus plan he signed into law this month.

"There's no question the economy's slowed down," he said at a White House news conference. "I don't think we're headed to a recession."

NBC's today show points out that oil and gas prices are up, home sales down, the dollar is down against the Euro. Amazingly the only place that the dollar is up in the world is South Africa and South Korea. We have a war where we are spending millions daily and we are financing this war by borrowing money from other countries. How is this good. To fill our oil tank yesterday cost us $3.49/gal. This is getting out of hand. With one person working (by choice), how are families supposed to survive in this mess?

Mark and I are lucky in that we had a chance to pay off all our bills when we were both working, This cost us some things though. For three years we didn't do anything really. We rarely ate out, we didn't see any movies, we rarely went anywhere or bought anything except the needed essentials. We see the middle class fading away and what remains is the upper class and lower class. How can we keep going like this? How can we have a president that is so delusional that he truly believes that America is doing well? It will be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of months. Both Mark and I think there will be some sort of major change.