Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

Missed a posting last week as I was on the left coast where there was even more evidence of how miserable this recession is. Governor Terminator is threatening to issue IOUs to creditors and even to those due tax refunds. Housing has crashed, and the "single-family home" is becoming an endangered species. But besides the obvious unemployment, Chapter Elevens, foreclosures, stock crashes, and the rest, it is amazing how everyone is trying to bleed us for every penny. The airlines, after gouging ticket prices (over $600 each- did anybody notice that fuel prices are less than 30% of their peak?), charge $17 per piece of luggage (each way) and then have the audacity to charge two dollars for a bottle of water on a cross-country red-eye. Legoland (the worst value ever for anyone over four years old, by the way), after charging $10 for parking (or was it 12?) and $62 a head for a third-class Disneyland, then charges multiples of fair value for food, $5 for carnival games that can't be won (not even a chintzy "thanks for playing" prize for the little kids), super-premium gift-shop prices, etc. Even the gas stations charge extra for credit cards. It used to be that paying cash might get you a discount, but when I put my credit card in a pump in la-la-land, a "Do you approve the 45 cent processing fee?" message popped up. The crazy price increases in a recession are irritating enough, but the constant nickel and diming (or five and ten dollaring) is ridiculous. At least energy prices are down as OPEC realized that lowering prices was the only way to defuse the clamor for alternative energy. The rescue packages are helping some, despite their aweful administration (would have been nice to have that wasted Iraq war money, huh?), but where will this printing money policy lead us? And by the way, wait till we see what's under the consumer credit rock...