Sunday, January 22, 2012

The long-lasting Escort

This was the scene early one morning at Walgreen's - two little white Escorts, side by side. One is mine, the other, well, it's around, but I don't have any idea whom it belongs to.
My Escort is beat up and getting a little rusty. It's 11 years old, and the odometer just rolled past 190,000 miles.
But it still gets me where I want to go. It still starts with one turn of the key. It still gets decent gas mileage.
They don't make them any more.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Blame Iran

Iran's saber-rattling in the Straits of Hormuz is taking cash out of our pockets.
The energy traders on Wall Street are worried. They probably should be. Iran is declaring it can control one of the choke points in the world's supply of oil.
The U.S. Navy is standing by to stop the Iranians if they try, but if it comes to that, that's a shooting war.
Shooting wars disrupt business. That's already driving up the price of crude oil - it went past $100 a barrel today - and the futures price of gasoline.
Given that increase, I think we can expect a retail price move within the next couple of days, probably to a prevailing major-brand price of at least $3.559 a gallon in Michigan. There's still a little play in the prices, for now, but unless something changes drastically, what you see today might be the best you get for a while.