It ain’t as easy as it seems.

Just to establish a little cred (and … let’s face it … brag), my prediction about oil prices has been right on target. When oil was still very near the peak, I wrote in Oil Prices Fall!, “I’m predicting that oil prices will keep going down and will fall to a level fairly close to what they were last year.” The price has been falling steadily from the day I wrote that. It’s now $118 down from a peak near $150. It hasn’t been that low since early May … so … we’re getting there.

My wife is into home economics these days. She inherited a thirty year old book from her mother called “Home Food Systems”. The book has a boxed quote from Organic Gardening to highlight a section of recipies:

“With rising supermarket prices, families will decide to eliminate the middleman–the processor. Once one discovers that it is only necessary to use a humble measuring cup to convert 20 cents-a-pound flour into 42 cents-a-pound pancake mix, the urge to be a home food processor becomes irresistible. The 1980’s will see the ‘deprocessing of America’ as people produce and process food for themselves.”

Since they usually order in pizza and wings, I’ll bet Joe and Jane Sixpack can’t find their measuring cup.

Now, flour is 42 cents for a pound (more than doubling) and pancake mix is $1.50 (more than tripling). So much for …

* Predictions in general.

* The likelihood that Joe and Jane Sixpack will do anything real about the mess they’re sinking into before it’s too late!