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As the cost of crude oil again flirted with a record price of $100, CBS assigned John Blackstone to offer a concrete demonstration of the inflationary abstraction of a ripple effect across the economy. Blackstone picked coffee. The costs of shipping beans from Honduras and Guatemala, firing up the roaster, running the forklifts, powering delivery trucks, even the petroleum based "plastic wrap that keeps coffee fresh" are all increasing.
How could Blackstone resist? He actually said it: "Energy prices percolate through the whole economy." And his sign off? "That could mean that what is brewing in the economy is trouble."
For ABC's A Closer Look, Robert Krulwich (subscription required) dramatized how many more cars will be built if the economies of India and China come anywhere close to emulating those of the western Europe, Japan and the United States. Consider these statistics for automobiles per 1,000 people of an age to have a driver's license: USA 1023; France 702; Japan 608; India 11; China 9. He imagined the billions of new ccars and trucks yet to be built. "If they run on gasoline and oil what is going to happen to gas prices then?"
NBC ran a couple of features on other aspects of the economy. Mike Taibbi added to the series The Housing Bust with discouraging news for tenants. If landlords foreclose on their properties, tenants are liable for eviction even if they never missed a month's rent. He found homeless shelters in Minneapolis "opening up new dorms because of the new phenomenon--rental families made homeless by the mortgage crisis." The decline in the value of the US dollar on European exchanges has led to a new type of vacation in the United States: Virgin Atlantic and other airlines advertise three-day blitzes, Stephanie Gosk told us from London. "Shopping is the mission not sightseeing" with buses taking newly arrived passengers straight to "a suburban outlet mall for bargains."
Funnily, Gosk told us that "Britons and Europeans are flocking to the US." She did not explain in which continent she thought Britain was to be found.
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