Hi Jay - sounds like Hawaii is a really good deal right now. I've already booked tickets to fly to New Orleans for Christmas - on United - direct flight, no interconnections, only $231 per ticket round trip. That's not a fabulous deal for other times of year, nor is it great for flights with stop-overs, but it's great for the season and the non-stop. The California sister is coming in, too, so we just need to get the brother to fly in from Arizona and we've got everyone. Planning to go see the 95-year-old aunt in Biloxi.
Hawaii is too far for a short trip but I am looking into Florida for Thanksgiving.
We paid $1.19 for gas yesterday in Warrenton. I haven't seen it that low in years. We went for a drive, had lunch at a country style restaurant (the H likes salty Virginia country ham), bought some apples at a roadside stand, and looked at the turning leaves. Next week we will drive to a pick-your-own apple place and pick some antique varieties of apples, which were not ready yet. And in October I am going to Philadelphia for a conference. Doing my part to keep the wheels of the economy turning.
I don't know when or if the economy will turn around, but I've seen a couple of things that make me want to start DCA very carefully - a Taiwanese chipmaker said they were getting orders - no link, sorry, and also, commercial paper outstandings seem to be starting to turn around. That's a component of what people used to think of as real money. Despite all the interest rate cuts and coupon passes since December, 2000, commercial paper outstandings kept plummeting until recently. This could just be a blip, just passing it on FWIW. I have also seen some help wanted signs in a few stores.
Almost to the bottom of the page on this link is the graph for commercial paper outstandings:
federalreserve.gov |
