Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Two Snapshots of the Coming Depression

Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it means everything.
  • Fine Dining is Kaput. I drove by Anthony's Fish Grotto here in San Diego at lunch time today. It's a mid-range eatery - somewhat pricey (dinner for two will cost about $60 without wine), but well below the most expensive hashhouses in town. They normally have about 25 cars in their parking lot for lunch. Today there were four.
  • Empty Grocery Shelves. Later I went to Vons grocery store to buy some fresh vegetables. There were gapping holes in the fresh food aisles. There was no broccoli, no green beans, a slim selection of fresh meats, and the fruit look past its prime. The canned and packaged food aisles were full. It was as if anything with a long shelf life was still abundant while those things that have to be delivered fresh daily was in short supply. As if several suppliers stopped delivering.
Maybe I just caught a couple of anomalies. I hope so. Or, maybe I spotted the leading edge of the total collapse of the nation's economy. I hope I'm just being paranoid.

1 comment:

PoliShifter said...

It is indeed a bit frightening...

I think the high end stuff will suffer the most while bargin stores and bargin eateries might do ok.

I've noticed a drop off at stores like Home Depot but Costco is still very busy on the weekends.

I think we are nearing a danger zone of a snow ball effect where companies lay people off to cut costs leaving more people jobless with less money to turn around and spend.

The super rich will be fine and even prosper pickng up assets on the cheap. But upper middle class and Nouveaux Riche who were house rich with million dollar homes now worth $500K will suffer trying to make those Merceded payments and not likely to be so eager to spend $300 on dinner on a Saturday Night.