Gasoline is Cheap

Does anyone smell a rat in this whole high-gas-price kerfuffle?
I mean a media rat... The cost of a fill-up has risen what? maybe fifteen bucks. But we're seeing stories that people are pawning grandma's gold ring in order to get to work. Come on, it's fifteen bucks, anyone who can't budget around that is in the kind of financial condition where grandma's ring would have been gone long ago. And just now on Drudge: a Reuters story,

"Look at the gas prices," Birdsong said at Union Station in Los Angeles. "I just got a new bike. I'm thinking of riding it to the train station instead of driving my car there," she said.

What? Ride a bike 18 miles to save three bucks? Nah, this is a pretend problem ginned up by the talk-the-economy-into-the-ground folks.

Years ago I complained about the price of gas to a friend and he opened my eyes by asking, "Would you push a two thousand pound vehicle miles over hills and potholes for that little amount of money? Would you even push it a mile for the price of a gallon?"
He was right. Not a mile. Call me when gas hits five bucks a gallon.

More Talk-Down-The-Economy:

Sales of Existing Homes Edge Up in March
Apr 25 10:02 AM US/Eastern

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON
Sales of previously owned homes edged up slightly in March but not enough to keep the inventory of unsold homes from hitting a record high as the once-booming housing market continued to flash signals of a slowdown.

The National Association of Realtors said Tuesday that sales of existing homes edged up a tiny 0.3 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.92 million units.

The March increase followed a bigger 5.1 percent jump in February with the two months representing the first advances since five consecutive monthly declines.

The median price of a new home rose to $218,000 last month, a gain of 7.4 percent from a year ago. That price increase was far slower than the double-digit gains turned in last year as the housing boom was peaking.

Everything is up. Prices, sales, everything. But it's not up enough, see. After a blistering market, any inventory is liable to be a record. So now it's a "once booming" market. Nah, the market, like all complex markets fluctuates. It may go down now, but it might just as easily go up.

I'm in the middle of selling a home, and truth is, these stories used to scare me. One in particular had me thinking that I should take any price I could get because the market collapse was imminent. Then I noticed the dateline; it was a year and a half old.