10/12/09 Stockholm, Sweden – Perhaps it’s nice to hear the recovery song and dance on television, but it’s getting harder to finance your grocery shopping list every week.
If only we could pay our bills with optimism.
Hat tip to The Reformed Broker for spotting this main street not-so-recovery.
Rocky Vega
Rocky Vega is publisher of Agora Financial International, where he advances the growth of Agora Financial publishing enterprises outside of the US. Previously, he was publisher of The Daily Reckoning, and founding publisher of both UrbanTurf and RFID Update -- which he ran from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico -- as well as associate publisher of FierceFinance. Rocky has an honors MS from the Stockholm School of Economics and an honors BA from Harvard University, where he served on the board of directors for Let’s Go Publications, Harvard Student Agencies, and The Harvard Advocate.
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I think the food stamp program is doing a good job of propping up food prices.
Next they should do one showing a food shopper in California holding up an IOU from the state government asking how much food that will get them.
We will reap what we sow (or hallucinate).
PS….I’m a Atheist.
It’s taken a solid year for the tanking economy to affect supermarket prices. I finally see some real sales where I can actually save a decent amount of money. I take this as a sign that things must be pretty bad. And it’s worse for non-food products. The local men’s clothing store had been running “buy one, get one free” for suits. Now the ad is “buy one, get TWO free.”
When I started my blog 1 in 9 Americans were on food stamps
It is now 1 in 11
Folks, my blog is just over 2 years old.
Welcome to the recovery.
I am remembering a moment back from my childhood in Detroit (1968). We were in line at the checkout counter of my local grocery store. The woman ahead of us was paying with food stamps. She became indignant that her foodstamps did not pay for her bag of dogfood. So she dumped the dogfood off the counter, leaves the check-out line and comes back with a large portion of ground chuck for her dog. It was the same package we were paying for our weekly family meat budget. We paid with cash. It’s a memory I will never forget, not the expression on my Mother’s face.
I am smiling as I write this. You see, I am on DHS’ “Terror Suspect List” because I STOCKPILE food and nonfood items. Groceries expensive? That’s okay, I can dig into my pile, and then replace later at a sale. As Howard Ruff writes, “It’s the investment you can eat.” So, enjoy your Hamburger Helper, I’m dining on flank steak tonight!