Gone grocery shopping lately?

Imagine my surprise when my husband came home tonight with what he thought was a half gallon of ice cream.  I noticed the container looked a bit small, and low and behold, a "1/2 gallon" of ice cream is no longer two quarts, rather it is now 1.5 quarts....for the same price as the two quart size!

Now one could say so what, except that almost EVERYTHING in the store is shrinking in size, but not in price.  What does that mean?  You spend the same, or more, and get less, which means you need to buy more and so on.

More

Higher prices for less product, wages that are stagnant (anyone get a good raise lately?), and of course the whole housing/foreclosure crisis.  Speaking of foreclosures, on my way home yesterday I noticed a realtor's open house sign that had, in bright green paper "Bank Owned."  Of course I wanted to see the house, especially since it was about three blocks from my house.  

So, I traveled over to the bank owned house, and found out that the house had sold a year ago for over $800,000, and the bank was now asking $625,000 (and even that wasn't the lowest the bank was willing to go.)  Now mind you while home prices have dropped in my area (I live in a middle class area of San Jose, the affluent areas have not seen much, if any, drop in price), I haven't heard of all that many foreclosures, until yesterday at least.  

What does this tell us about the economy, well, according to Bernanke:

WASHINGTON - A rising tide of late mortgage payments and home foreclosures poses considerable dangers to the national economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned anew Monday as he urged Congress to take additional steps to alleviate the problems.

Take a look at this: 260 homes for sale in my zip code....and I tried to count how many were foreclosures and lost count, go ahead, take a look, look at what is happening to the middle class, my friends, my neighbors.  I am still in shock as this is the first time I have seen how bad things are in San Jose, let alone the rest of the county.

You realize something here?  I haven't even touched on the cost of energy,  higher education, health care, and take your pick. Figure those things into the picture and we haven't begun to see the end of this downturn, not by a long shot.

I haven't been around much lately, been working two jobs, trying to start a small business (making greeting cards/showing others how to create cards and things with rubber stamps), and well, frankly, I am tired of the 24/7 Clinton/Obama.

You see, to me, even though I am an Obama supporter, and yes, I am disappointed in Clinton's campaign, however, given the state of our nation I will do all I can to get a Democrat elected.  Our children are going to suffer, they already are after almost eight years of the worst president ever, and as our economy tanks I figure that there is a bigger picture out there, one that requires some unpleasant compromises, but there is no way that I will stand aside and allow McCain to destroy what little we have left.

Yes, this started out as a rant on groceries, and finished with why we need to pull together, but then again, I always tend to wander in my writing and thinking ; )