I Drink Your Milkshake

Wow, I looked back at some of my posts from earlier this year. Kind of frightening how its playing out.

Whats odd is that its going how I thought it would - I still dont feel any better - actually I feel worse.

So to recap, I said (about the price of oil):
$50 by april
$60 by August
$70 by end of 2009
Well we already made $72/bbl and its still June. So directionally I was right but its beating even my expectations. I probably should have invested some money and set $60 as my selling point. I could have doubled my money!

But to put some meat on the bones I explained to make that future happen we would need to see the following:

Unemplyment peaking, housing inventory falling, some inflation and dollar weakening.

Frightening. So New unemployment numbers are out today and beat analysts expectations - new claims are down again (for what the 5th weak in a row?) continuing claims are still rising but not as fast. So depending on the measure you could argue we are peaking. Housing info is turning positive, new builds are still slow but thats helping to reduce inventory. Prices still falling a bit but not nearly as fast - I think we are seeing it bottom out. Inflation and dollar weakening - check!

My garden is working out OK, the tiller did its job, the seedlings I started in the Bonus room went in the ground in late April. The peppers blanched a little the first week in the bright sunlight but now they are growing nicely. Onions - some have grown well, others seem to have failed. Not sure why? 3 blueberry bushes are growing well but the birds are eating this years fruit. I guess thats ok, I need the bushes to grow and wasnt counting on fruit this year anyway. Ill get a cage for them next year. Finally we have a family or two of squirrels, some chipmunks, birds eating the acorns, and I saw a rabbit this morning - im glad because I was tired of falling on my acorns. I got wild strawberries and blackberries too although I didnt realize I had strawberries until I had mowed them once so their fruit was small.

And now we have ourselves a golf cart. I was thinking of selling my motorbike, but that was before oil went from $50 to $70 in a few weeks. Now Im thinking I might need it again.

Change is coming. In spades. I think this economic "recovery" I spoke of may never truly come.