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By Bill Plante , Staff writer
Salem News

What I want to know is this: What does the Fed dropping the short-term interest rate a quarter of a percentage point have to do with the price of hamburg?

The governors of the Federal Reserve System don't seem to be worried about inflation - probably because they're cooped up with computers that measure everything but how ordinary people live.

Better they should use my inflation counter. It doesn't measure stats, it just references the cheapest mix of hamburg at a supermarket meat counter. This week, it was $1.89, pre-frozen with 15 percent fat content. Too much? Try a mix of beef and pork at $1.30.

I don't do much shopping anymore, but I do make the rounds for necessities - gasoline, for one, because no matter how light my foot is on the gas pedal, the engine consumes what could have been about a pound and a quarter of cheap hamburg every 29 miles.

Part of the gas in the tank comes from oil in the ground - very expensive. Part of it comes from corn. The price of corn has gone up 33 percent in a year.

We like meat. It comes from animals. Animals eat grain, lots of grain. So do combustion engines. We step on the gas pedal, we are not burning only oil from wherever, we are burning chicken feed, dairy products and eggs that have nearly doubled in price in the last year.

Wall Street, for reasons known only to those who live with statistics and computers, isn't all that worried about inflation. I have no clue as to why. Every item in my supermarket was brought there from wherever by trucks a lot thirstier than my small Hyundai.

We used to call high prices "too dear," back when farms were a lot closer to where people lived. The milkman delivered milk and other dairy products to our homes; Sears, Roebuck catalogs put us in touch with things we needed from away, and freight trains brought them to us. The Great Depression became the time when almost everything became "too dear."

We called what we had to do in order to survive "getting by." No one needed a computer then to measure how things were. Local storekeepers began keeping small notebooks when times became so hard they could no longer keep track of what was owed them. Before that, they'd made notes on the protective cuffs of their jackets. Thus the phrase, when someone was asked how he was able to buy groceries that week: "We had to put it on the cuff."



Cuffs were worn by storekeepers with a heart. The times weighed equally heavily on customers with consciences, as well as the neighborhood grocers trying to keep their stores open. When cupboards were nearly bare, and cuffs at a neighborhood market were stretched to the "sorry, but ..." point, that was when the Great Depression really hit home.

No intention here to suggest that's where we're headed. The Feds say they have too many safety valves today to bring us from reaching that despairing level. But the telltale signs of recession begin at the bottom of the food chain; so you want to know how things are going, keep your eye on the price of hamburg.

Cuffs were worn by storekeepers with a heart. The times weighed equally heavily on customers with consciences, as well as the neighborhood grocers trying to keep their stores open. When cupboards were nearly bare, and cuffs at a neighborhood market were stretched to the "sorry, but ..." point, that was when the Great Depression really hit home.

No intention here to suggest that's where we're headed. The Feds say they have too many safety valves today to bring us from reaching that despairing level. But the telltale signs of recession begin at the bottom of the food chain; so you want to know how things are going, keep your eye on the price of hamburg.


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Bill Plante is a staff columnist. Contact him at plantejr@comcast.net.