A Year Ago

Whenever I read an article about price changes - they always compare to the price of a year ago. So if you can keep your prices artificially inflated for over a year - it becomes the norm. Oil prices of over $100 a barrel are being compared to $70 a barrel one year ago. But if you think back just a little further oil rices were only $30 a barrel and remained that way for a long time.

Same for housing prices. You can see that housing prices have fallen a lot from one year ago. But if you look only a little further, you will see that even these lower prices are much higher than they were - say five years ago. And they were fairly steady for many years before that.

I'm not fooled by these mind games - but unfortunately a lot of folks are. The people that set the prices know most Americans have a very short memory and are taking advantage of that.

I am, however, counting on American's short memory when it comes to the election. I hope they will forget about all the in-fighting between the Democratic candidates and can still vote for whoever wins the nomination. I've said before that I do not dislike John McCain, but we will not have any real change if a Republican is elected because they will keep a lot of the current staff. In that case things will be pretty much the same a year from now.