Gas prices and the local economy?
 

With oil closing at $138 a barrel, fuel prices will most likely go up around $.20 on Monday. What do you people think will happen to the local economy?
I have already seen a reduction in room bookings at several resorts on the East side of the lake. Even some of the timeshare places are not getting their maint. fees sent in. The marinas are still not full. I have seen tons of boats sitting at marinas with the shrink wrap still on them. And with the bail out of the mortgage mess, what will happen to the restaraunts and other service companies? Will they get a hand as well if things go south for them??? I mean most people start to cut back on eating out as one of the first things they do.
What affect is the price of gas going to do to Bike week? Obviously if there are still plenty of rooms that week, something is not right.

I think things are going to hurt around the lake this summer. I hope not, but
unless oil production picks up to quench the supply and demand desert.....:(

I suggest everyone start writting thier congressmen/women and let them know how displeased we are....

There is no supply and demand problem. You can pull into any gas station and buy all the gas you want at $4.00 plus a gallon. This is not like 1973 when there was no gas to be bought. This is contrived by speculation, the weak dollar and low consumer confidence. This is really an economic attack on the United States, and it is working.

Agreed
 

Absolutly Hockypuck.. Supply and demand my butt ! OPEC is putting the squeeze on us. However we as a Nation need to ease up on our Glutonous ways or it will only get worse.
People who drive by themselves in the huge SUV's and non stop plastic junk purchases at walmart have to end. If everyone can be a little more conservative , OPEC will feel the heat.

Then why is it having similar effects all over the world? The foreign news sites are full of the same woes, even from countries that aren't friendly to us.

Just collateral damage. I don't think Iran, Venezuela, Russia, or any of the OPEC countries are feeling too badly about what is happening to the others, especially the US. They have been opportunistic and taken steps to reduce the power of the US and many of our allies, on both economic and military fronts. The Saudi's are playing us like a fine violin.
It now becomes our problem to solve, and our government doesn't have a clue how to do that.

This oil issue is a "classic bubble" and it will burst....the problem is when ?

There may be a bit of a Silver Cloud to this.

People who cannot afford to travel out of the country due to the weak dollar and spiraling gas prices are choosing to vacation closer to home.

So, while it may be bad, it shouldn't be that bad.

Yes...but my question is how is it going to affect us all in so far as our local town economies this summer? Seeing as we are basically tourist and second home driven during the summer/autumn months

price is driven by the commodities market in New york. A lot of hedge fund money going into oil like there was in tech stocks in the late 90's. Supply and demand didn't change by 15+ dollars in two days. Don't believe there is any conspiracy just a lot of people putting money into oil assuming it will be a hedge against inflation and the sagging dollar but a lot of our enemies are getting rich at our expense. Generally when things go up high( and will likely go higher) and fast they adjust but when who knows. this increase may cause a world wide reccession which will cut demand further

I just checked out all of the lake web cams, and for a Saturday afternoon that is 90 degrees and sunny, I can't believe how few boats seem to be out there. Maybe this is really a sign of the times.

its dead up here..
 

I am looking out over Moultonboro bay on a beautiful Sat evening and there are no boats to be seen... astounding

We were out on the lake early yesterday afternoon and the level of boat traffic was definitely way down for a weekend. There was no queue waiting to go through the Weirs Channel, there was minimal chop between the Weirs and Spindle Point, and I saw few boats heading up to or coming from Meredith.

I expect things will pick up once schools are out, but I think even then traffic out on the lake will be down even lower than last summer.

This weekend is a big graduation weekend as well so weekend attendance is focused elsewhere.

It is not OPEC or our government that is driving prices up.It is supply and demand...China and India are devloping rapidly and taking a lot of the worlds supply.There is actually plenty of oil out there.We have a lifetime supply in the Arctic and on the Gulf coast,but thanks to preasure from Sierra Club,Greenpeace,etc etc.......our gov will not allow drilling or building of new refineries,which are badly needed since we haven't built a new one in 40 years.If anyone had stones enough to tell the greenies where to go,we would have all the power we needed.Also,nuke power is hugely efficient,as France has shown.
Oh,one last thought....oil does not come from rotting dinosaur carcasses as many believe,but from the heating and cooling deep in the earth.There is no shortage of oil.....just the will to get it.
About the effect on local business',I for one,am circling the wagons just in case.Watching spending,trying to get more efficient.It's tough on employees because their costs are up too and it's not a good year for raises.

Don't forget for what it's worth it was also graduation weekend for many districts.

We were fortunate to be able to grab a day up at the lake yesterday and I was stunned at the low boat traffic. We took a ride over to Meredith for lunch and walked into Giuseppe's at 12:30 and had our pick of tables. There were only 3 other tables occupied. I've NEVER seen Giuseppe's like this during lunch hour on a weekend no matter what the season. I think that graduations may have contributed to low boat traffic on Saturday but what's the deal with Sunday?

I walked right into a 99 restaurant yesterday with a big group of friends and we were seated immediately. We've always had to wait, in the past. There were empty tables around us.

While it's a given that the economy is affecting the restaurant business, one more factor is the weather. It's been a long winter and we finally had a hot weekend. Who in their right mind would want to go into a restaurant? After a few more hot days, people would probably say "OK that's enough," and retreat to places that have AC. But yesterday I saw people outside, enjoying the feeling of sweating by standing still in the shade instead of from snow shoveling.

One of the people manning an information booth told me yesterday they had seen a surge in foreign tourists, especially from the UK, because the weak dollar makes it cheap for them once they get here. However, according to BBC and London Times online, they're having the same difficulty with rising gas prices, high food prices, falling home values, and their airlines are also in the same situation as ours.

There may be hope for any restaurant serving local food. The rise in food prices is due to a worldwide shortage resulting from the following:

1) Mass production and large-scale commercial farming is almost entirely dependent on oil for machinery, processing, packaging as well as oil-derived fertilizers and pesticides. And then there's the cost of trucking the food from there to here.

2) More food crops are being turned into biofuels.

3) For the last few decades (and especially in the last few years) we've been turning farms into subdivisions. It's been happening in many other nations, also.

Since the mass-production and mass-distribution model of food is now showing how vulnerable it is to the price of oil, the locally-grown produce that raised your grandparents (and many of our parents) is making a comeback. The small scale family farms that were able to survive the last few years are now the more sustainable business model because they don't use as much oil-derived modernization as a large-scale farm has to. More things are done by the hands of people whose labor used to be more expensive than oil but not anymore. The final products don't have to ride the truck very far (if at all) to reach you.

This is good news for local producers. Moulton Farm said they were very busy. I would imagine the area's other farms are the same way. Recently I was down in the Boston area and found that Richardson's Dairies had the cheapest milk prices anywhere (even better than Market Basket.) Their own cows are on-site. Makes me wonder what the local dairies around here are charging for on-site milk purchases, but I keep forgetting to check. Does anyone know?

Milk prices are "UTTERLY" rediculous, and it won't be getting better any time soon. You can bet the farm on that. Everything is going to cost more moooney.

Hangovers! :laugh::laugh:

Sunday on the Broads
 

Spent a few hours at the beach at LSP on Sunday. I thought the boat traffic seemed pretty "normal". Good number of high performance boats and good number of "family" boats towing the kids on tubes. Lot's of jet skis.

Slowed down around 4 pm.. but that's normal for a Sunday.

The breeze picked up from the NW.. but I didn't see many sailboats.. go figure, the wind is free and they weren't out there. :confused:

There are actually a lot of boats out there today, considering it's a mid-week afternoon, and the public schools aren't yet out for the season. For a weekend, today's traffic would be light, but it's busier than it would normally be at this time.

Hey, positive thought: Last weekend I noticed something I haven't seen a lot of since the early 80s... people with little boats. I'm talking rowboats with outboards on them, small Boston Whalers, etc. It was actually refreshing to see, reminded me of what it was like here when I was a little kid.

Maybe, just maybe what might happen is that the lake would start to take on more of its former qualities from the 1970s and 80s, and the tourism scene would just change instead of flop. We'd get more of the kind of crowd we had then, and less of the demographic we've seen more recently... but there would still be a tourism economy once the area's marketing people figured out who they were targeting.