A Correction: Gas Prices in Orlando

I made the prediction back in the first half of this year that gas prices would hit $4/gallon, if not higher. At least in Orlando.

Today, I filled up and paid a "mere" $3.48/gallon at this local BP. I haven't seen prices this low since March.

I made the mistake that too many make, and I should have known better. I took a number of data points, graphed them, saw the trend, and assumed that I could extend that trend forever. And thus I predicted $4/gallon gas, and worse.

That's the same type of reasoning that got us into trouble in the Internet Bubble of 2000, and the Real Estate Bubble of 2006. Except it was for the opposite reason, that everyone assumed the money-generating trends would always be going up. Nothing goes up forever, or down forever.

It's still costing a lot of people a lot of money to buy something as basic as gas. It's already pushed past $4/gallon in other parts of the country.

That cost is impacting everything in the supply chain because we're a society that depends on fossil fuels. Prices on everything are going up. It's having an effect on the overall economy. Hiring has slowed and in many areas it's reversed. High fossil fuel costs are slowly grinding us down.

With the nuclear disaster that unfolded in Fukashima we're going to continue to depend extensively on fossil fuels in spite of the promise to use more 'green', 'renewable' sources of energy. Just like with the Internet Bubble and the Real Estate Bubble, we're now experiencing the collapse of an even bigger (worldwide), longer lasting (over a century) bubble, the Cheap Energy Bubble. It's going to be the worst bubble collapse of all.

Technical

Olympus E-3 with Zuiko Digital 12-60mm. Post-processed with Lightroom 3.4.1, the latest update. I'm not too crazy about the latest update. For one thing, it's slow. Very slow. Much slower than 3.3. I may back up to 3.3, since what it was supposed to fix didn't apply to me.