Back at it again

Wow, its been forever since I posted.

Im trying to find the time, and I need to post more personal stuff with this too, so I may change up the format some to try and squeeze in more family and personal photos and fun.

But seriously the last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind.
I went back to Tasmania in September right after Hurricanes Gustav and Ike hit the Gulf coast and crippled refineries and a few oil platforms. The end result was a gasoline shortage all over the South East that we are only now pulling out of.

Then sometime near the end of September - roughly the same time, the government started making noises about the banks that were failing.

it what is now being coined the "credit crisis" we have discovered that banks are low on cash after making too many loans to all sorts of people that couldnt repay them. Tensions run high (as we head into the final phase of the elections) and finger pointing is everywhere. Some blame the mess on the government (some are blaming democrats for encouraging sub prime loans for decades) others put the blame on the banks, the interest rates (Greenspan and the federal reserve) or the home buyers who drank the banks Kool-aid.

The results are truly frightening, the Dow is falling every day, down from 14,000 a year ago to around 8700 today. Every day so far in October has been a down day. Trillions of dollars have been lost. I dare not look at my 401K portfolio.

The reverberations are being felt in the commodity markets. Oil is falling fast on the speculation that if the economy implodes and a depression sets in there wont be much demand for oil. So here we are feeling what some Peak oilers predicted:

Rapid increase in prices
followed by economic response
Followed down by oil price - which doesnt seem like a good deal since no-one will be able to afford even cheap oil.

meanwhile in a cheaper oil environment the oil companies wont be spending lots of money to go exploring and will rely on the rapidly depleting exsisting fields. Our Post peak production curve may therefore dip faster than expected. Its possible that with some economic recovery, and a return of high prices the exploration will pick up and even production numbers might temporarily rebound (like the production of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union did). But ultimatley there is a sense that if producers start shutting oil in we may have seen the official global peak already.

Its a sobering thought that we may now be stuck between the rock and the hard place:
The Rock - weak economy - falling GDP - a correction with unknown proportions.
The Hard place - if the economy ever recovers we will be faced with $150+ oil - which may mean the economy NEVER recovers.

I guess in the meantime - since I still have a job to do and a Salary coming in, life is good, fuel is getting cheaper and It might buy me some time to prepare for any future problems.

One idea I should mention in a future post is an emergency kit, to help transition if things get really nasty.

I am working on getting the back garden set up for planting lots of vegetables in the spring....
Ill let you know how that goes.