The media reports daily that Americans are trading in their big vehicles to buy smaller, greener transports. Even Car & Driver magazine is doing articles about fuel sippers. I suspect their readers care more about the new Dodge Challenger than the Smart ForTwo, but they don't want to swim against the riptide, I'm sure. Reports come in daily that people are taking terribly low trade-in value for their SUV's and pickups. The unrelenting carnage, the horror, the full-blown panic of it all is around us every time we turn on the TV, look at the 'net or read a paper.
This morning I came across this article that predicts that everyone will leave the comfortable suburban and exurban homes they now live in and crowd into congested cities because, well, because gasoline is a tad pricey. I always imagine these articles are written by unmarried young people without children who are living in overpriced rental units in New York. Maybe not, frankly, I don't really care who these nitwits are. Around our stately plantation the bigger current issue is about the tremendous building boom going on all around us and how our exurban paradise soon might be in the middle of the suburbs. The idea of buying a farm even farther out in the country where the chickens, goats and big dogs run free has been broached. Buying a tiny overpriced condo in the city? No. That won't be happening. We are blissfully out of step. Contrarians? Yep.
Lately I had been looking for more ways to profit from the media-driven panic over energy prices. With a sky filled horizon to horizon with dark clouds there have to be some shiny silver linings. But, instead of attempting to profit I've decided now to offer relief for folks like the ones that get rounded up for tasty quotes in all of these articles. After all, this is an age where the US Congress holds hearings about Wall Street "speculators" and argues about whether they are really, really, bad guys or distilled, pure, Satanic evil. *Sigh* So, rather than profit, it's time to offer relief to these folks I read about and hear about daily.
My offer to you, the long-suffering owner of a clean, fully-loaded GMC Yukon Denali with less than 15,000 miles on the clock: sign over the clear title on that gas hog to me and I will come to your location and give you $750 in cold cash to put towards your Smart ForTwo, Prius, skateboard, bicycle or whatever you wish to drive in these troubled times. You do NOT want to get caught driving an unfashionable SUV this summer. Plus, by this fall, gasoline will be $10/ gallon the "experts" say so you'll just be parking the Denali anyway-- better to get $750 for it NOW. And, for a limited time only, I will make the same offer on the wildly unpopular Hummer H3, and the fat Toyota Sequoia. Don't miss out on this one-time only offer. But wait, there's more! I am making a second offer of $500 cash to the second person who offers one of these vehicles. Tick-tock people. Time's wasting and gas will never, ever, ever, be cheaper than it is today! Right?
What can I say, I'm a giver. Now I need to work on my offer for the clear deed to one of these suburban "McMansions" the media says folks will be fleeing. Get me Chris Dodd's loan guy on the phone, we're going to have to get creative.
UPDATE: Sadly, as of June 29th I have not received one serious response to my kind offer to ease the suffering of my fellow Americans. I did however put 15 gallons of gasoline in my Chevy Tahoe on Saturday. $3.799/ gallon.
