Day of Crude Reckoning

Taking a yearend look at crazily bouncing crude oil prices of the passing months, “Drive less, walk more, change to hybrid” probably would win the 2007 New Year resolution Contest. Econ headlines this fall sounded like a broken record, one from America’s not-so-favorite selection, with a tuneful “$100-a-bar-rel” being the all-repetitive hit verse.
I remember several days at CNN, anxiously anticipating that crude will hit the magic two zero number in just any moment, and then of course it always failed to. So we had to end the day with just another semi-boring market wrap up perversely highlighting the non-event of “we were almost there today.” I honestly felt the nerve racking excitement (one that only sick business people and even sicker business media people feel) those days that I too will be there, in the middle of everything when history is made.
Irony of fate: history was made once I was finally out of there. In fact, being the furthest down South in the Sunny State, I can’t possibly be more out of there now. Irony of irony: Wall Street did not crash, Bush is tranquil in his Oval-o and Americans still drive around their comfy SUVs. (I swear they do, I saw tons them on the highway driving back from Orlando today.)
So the world did not stop revolving around itself. Well, at least not yet. The hardcore trickledown effect is still ahead, as the unusually icy January that freezes scrumptious Florida strawberry fields and scares away even the most devout Disney fanatics has only just begun.
Think tanks and market analysts up in the less sunny capital have long warned that it’s just a matter of time until we see a three digit number on flashy stock billboards that bulls have also been hypnotizing 24/7 for so months. But as soon as the clear and present danger was over and people wiped the sweat of oily stress off their foreheads, they quickly forgot about ugly-bugly market numbers and switched up gears with the usual sense of all-American “I-can-still-afford-it” comfort.
When the closing bell rang yesterday, crude oil finished slightly under $100 again, in the psychologically safe zone of the nineties. So, probably few Americans will suffer from neurotic nightmares of flying hundred-dollar bills, SUV-less Wal-Mart bus trips with sadistically laughing Saudi princes.
Alas, we’re not as far from these wakeful nights as many would wish. So, those who traded weight-loss promises to greener gas pledges on New Year’s Eve, will definitely have more sleep this winter.