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Vail Associates estimates their ski tourism will be down 9 percent this winter. Whistler projects a 15 percent cut in American tourists to their ski mountain this season. Related WestPac announced last week a 25 percent cut in its staff.
Nobody knows the extent of the economic maelstrom or how it will effect our tourist-based economy, but signs of stress are already showing. If they align in a “perfect storm” scenario, we might be facing what energy expert and part-time Aspenite Phillip Verleger prophesied two weeks ago in a letter to the editor.
“What mountain(s) will Skico close in the event of a serious recession?” asked Verleger. “What steps can [will] the city take if real-estate assessments drop by 50 percent? How will Snowmass and Aspen respond when work on the Base Village stops? Can the city cut its workforce by 50 percent? How will Aspen respond when half the glitzy stores around the mall are empty and boarded up? What will Aspen do when the rich do not come next summer?”
Aspen is not above national and global influences, and there is little doubt that the local economy will feel a jolt this winter that will trickle down to every wage-earner in the valley. To quote Thomas Friedman, we live in a flat world, even in the mountains. In his New York Times column last week, Friedman described how the “meltdown” of Iceland’s banks is proof of the interconnections of globalization. Optimistically, Friedman speculates that the global economic crisis will inspire international unity.
“I suspect,” wrote Friedman, “we will find ourselves living in a world in which key global economies are more intimately tied together than ever before. It will be a world in which multilateral diplomacy and regulation will no longer be a choice. It will be a reality and a necessity. We are all partners now.”
Blog columnist and cranky savant James Howard Kunstler takes an opposite view: “While I recognize the appeal of the ‘singularity’ narrative, which has the human race making a sudden evolutionary leap into some kind of cyborg-nirvana, I regard it as an utter bulls--t fantasy that has zero chance of occurring, given our stark predicament.”
Regardless of which forecast is more realistic, the stars seem to be aligned in a constellation of gloom, especially if you were let go by Related WestPac. But it goes much deeper than that. At a recent peak oil conference in Sacramento, Matthew Simmons, author of “Twilight in the Desert,” and one of the world’s top oil investment bankers, warned that the United States is on the verge of a “bank run” that will occur at the pump.
There are about 220 million vehicles in the United States, each with an average 20-gallon capacity, Simmons said. He projects that the average gas tank has five gallons in it. If everybody rushes to top off their tanks, it means 15 gallons x 220 million = 78 million barrels. With only 87 million barrels in reserve in the United States, that means a stranglehold on private transportation and food production.
The commercial airline industry is also in extremis. “At present,” wrote Dr. Roger Bezdek, an internationally recognized expert in energy market analysis, “the U.S. airline industry is hemorrhaging money and, despite desperate efforts to reduce costs and capacity, is on an unsustainable downward trajectory.”
On the household front, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts an 18 percent increase in natural gas heating costs, a 5 percent increase in propane, and a 10 percent increase in electricity.
“This is no drill,” concluded Verleger, and he’s right. Dire forecasts call for conservative measures, like living economically, efficiently and within our means. For the first time in decades Americans are facing serious economic shrinkage, and it hurts.
Our political leaders should prepare contingency plans for economic upheavals. When adjustments have to be made, we must face them with unity, as good neighbors in strong communities. The global economy is mostly out of our hands, but how we deal with it is up to us in what may become a defining moment in our history.
Nobody knows the extent of the economic maelstrom or how it will effect our tourist-based economy, but signs of stress are already showing. If they align in a “perfect storm” scenario, we might be facing what energy expert and part-time Aspenite Phillip Verleger prophesied two weeks ago in a letter to the editor.
“What mountain(s) will Skico close in the event of a serious recession?” asked Verleger. “What steps can [will] the city take if real-estate assessments drop by 50 percent? How will Snowmass and Aspen respond when work on the Base Village stops? Can the city cut its workforce by 50 percent? How will Aspen respond when half the glitzy stores around the mall are empty and boarded up? What will Aspen do when the rich do not come next summer?”
Aspen is not above national and global influences, and there is little doubt that the local economy will feel a jolt this winter that will trickle down to every wage-earner in the valley. To quote Thomas Friedman, we live in a flat world, even in the mountains. In his New York Times column last week, Friedman described how the “meltdown” of Iceland’s banks is proof of the interconnections of globalization. Optimistically, Friedman speculates that the global economic crisis will inspire international unity.
“I suspect,” wrote Friedman, “we will find ourselves living in a world in which key global economies are more intimately tied together than ever before. It will be a world in which multilateral diplomacy and regulation will no longer be a choice. It will be a reality and a necessity. We are all partners now.”
Blog columnist and cranky savant James Howard Kunstler takes an opposite view: “While I recognize the appeal of the ‘singularity’ narrative, which has the human race making a sudden evolutionary leap into some kind of cyborg-nirvana, I regard it as an utter bulls--t fantasy that has zero chance of occurring, given our stark predicament.”
Regardless of which forecast is more realistic, the stars seem to be aligned in a constellation of gloom, especially if you were let go by Related WestPac. But it goes much deeper than that. At a recent peak oil conference in Sacramento, Matthew Simmons, author of “Twilight in the Desert,” and one of the world’s top oil investment bankers, warned that the United States is on the verge of a “bank run” that will occur at the pump.
There are about 220 million vehicles in the United States, each with an average 20-gallon capacity, Simmons said. He projects that the average gas tank has five gallons in it. If everybody rushes to top off their tanks, it means 15 gallons x 220 million = 78 million barrels. With only 87 million barrels in reserve in the United States, that means a stranglehold on private transportation and food production.
The commercial airline industry is also in extremis. “At present,” wrote Dr. Roger Bezdek, an internationally recognized expert in energy market analysis, “the U.S. airline industry is hemorrhaging money and, despite desperate efforts to reduce costs and capacity, is on an unsustainable downward trajectory.”
On the household front, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts an 18 percent increase in natural gas heating costs, a 5 percent increase in propane, and a 10 percent increase in electricity.
“This is no drill,” concluded Verleger, and he’s right. Dire forecasts call for conservative measures, like living economically, efficiently and within our means. For the first time in decades Americans are facing serious economic shrinkage, and it hurts.
Our political leaders should prepare contingency plans for economic upheavals. When adjustments have to be made, we must face them with unity, as good neighbors in strong communities. The global economy is mostly out of our hands, but how we deal with it is up to us in what may become a defining moment in our history.
Paul Andersen’s column appears on Mondays in The Aspen Times.
