Crude

New record today -- $78.35/barrel.

Get ready for four-dollar gas.

According to the AP story: "Light sweet crude for August delivery settled at a new high of $76.70 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, then continued climbing in after-hours electronic trading, when volumes are significantly lower, to $78.35. The rally came as fighting between Israel and Lebanon intensified, explosions hit Nigerian oil installations and a diplomatic standoff dragged on between the West and Iran over its nuclear program."

This should come as no surprise since, as I'm fond of repeating, I told anyone who would listen this was going to happen back in january of '05.

I told them to read Jim Kunstler's book, "The Long Emergency," or in lieu of that, take an occasional look at his blog (the link to his "Clusterfuck Nation" is directly to the right of what you're reading this very moment; check it out).

For my trouble I got called "Chicken Little" and other epitheta opprobria.

Dig it: if you have credible reasons to believe that a disaster is brewing, the thing to avoid is the instinctive ostrich-like reaction of blanket denial and rationalization. The thing to do is get ready, and deal with it.

So I'll say it again: five or six or seven years from now we will NOT be living the way we're living now. We won't be jumping into our cars every time we need something from the store, or have to go to work. We won't be building endless tracts of McMansions farther and farther out from urban clusterfucks like Atlanta and Houston. It won't be possible.

So do the smart thing and get ready.

Eighty bucks a barrel is right around the corner, and sometime next year it'll hit a hundred.