Story of the Day: "It's the economy, stupid."
Ok. You're not stupid. And I'm not calling you stupid. You already know it's the economy...
I'm only referring to James Carville's classic campaign advice for Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential campaign. There he wrote on a whiteboard in their campaign offices: It's the economy, stupid.
I think he should do it again. Consider:
High Gas Prices Threaten to Shut Down Rural Towns.
A May survey by the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), a fuel analysis company, and Wright Express, a company that collects data on credit card transactions, found that people in rural areas spend as much as 16.02% of their monthly family income on gas, while people in urban areas of New York and New Jersey spend as little as 2.05%.
How's that going to work when gas prices nudge past $7.00 per gallon? In some rural areas gas prices are already past $5.00.
Rising Prices Hammer Seniors on Fixed Income
Annual inflation for food prices is 6%, for energy it's 28%. Both will rise as the year goes on.
The inflation adjustment for Social Security was 2.8%.
The unemployment rate, for those that are actively looking, rose to 5.5%. Add in those no longer actively looking or are under-employed...the rates rises to 9.7%.
“Slowing wage growth and falling employment is absolutely toxic if your business is selling anything to consumers,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics.
Really? Ya' think?
Auto sales plunged in June: Toyota (-21%), GM (-18%), Ford (-28%) for the month of June.
Now, some may be upset by reading this. Oh, what a negative person, they say. Perhaps.
But I do know you don't begin to address your challenges without first acknowledging them and their impact. And then take responsibility for changing them. We're in the first phase here: Hey! Houston. Got some problems here in our economy-landing ship. And it's going to take more than duct tape and Ron Howard's brother to fix.
Have a good 4th.
Update, July 3:
Employers Cut 62,000 Jobs in June, 438,000 in '08.
April and May job losses were revised down to 129,000, 52,000 more than previously thought.
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