Well, you can thank the EPA and greedy people for those prices. The plastic in the fuel tanks needs to be Ethanol fuel resistant, plus the EPA made it a law that all new fuel tanks have to have the positive vent valve installed for emissions reasons. As to the fuel hose, again, it's because of the Ethanol fuel. Plain old rubber hoses gum up, so the new hoses actually are 2 hoses, one within the other, to resist the Ethanol. The greedy people are the Politicians, Farmers (yes, FARMERS too), manufacturers, retailers, truckers, and anyone else that's in the supply side that sees a way to make a few extra bucks on something "new". (And don't get on my back about farmers having to grow the corn because of regulations. Every single farmer group, co-op, etc lobbied for the Ethanol cause they saw it as a way to sell more corn. The results have been catastrophic on our economy.

Oh, and if you guys think that the present prices are high, hang onto your jock straps, because you ain't seen nothing yet. The EPA, in conjunction with the a$$hole in charge of the White House (who makes tons of money and has already taken more vacations (that YOU paid for) than ANY other president in our history, just passed a law that mandates that all PRESENT (not new plants..present ones) fossil fuel (coal, gas and oil) fired electric generation facilities MUST reduce their emissions by 1/3.

I was listening to the liar in chiefs stooge Jay Carney last night on the daily white house press briefings and he stood there and bold faced lied to the American public and said that their studies showed that the reduction would actually lower costs. If you think that making the electric companies spend BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars will reduce costs, then I have this bridge in Brooklyn, NY that I'm trying to sell,... perhaps you'd be interested in it?

What will happen as a result is quite predictable: Greatly increased rates for electric power, decreased availability of the electric power so vital to our way of life, decreased reliability of the electric grid, a lower standard of living, decreased competitiveness of US products in world markets since most countries do not have such regulations, and Communist-style central control of the electric generating industry by a Washington-based bureaucracy with no understanding of the industry.

You are going to see costs SKYROCKET shortly guys. There were a bunch of ignorant people in this country that voted for this guy for a second term, (even though he had a dismal record at best during his first term), because they thought that he "meant well and was trying"... Pardon me, I think I'm going to go vomit......

It was all planned a long time ago.

I wrote out a longer reply, but the site always logs me out before I can submit it.

What would Blackbeard do, for that matter Jesus?

Have a cold one and think about it.

I feel your pain on the batteries Ferm...had to replace the one in the old minivan last week...they were $45 last time I got one for it (2008), $75 this time.

Several months ago when the stock market hit an all time high I moved all my 401k money out of stocks expecting the market to crash...since then its hit several more records in spite of the stagnant economy, the Russian's, slow job growth, etc...

None of it adds up.

I think part of the reason that people are still investing in the market is because they don't think that the market will crash. They have no idea what $20 Trillion dollars in debt is doing to this Country's economy. One day, it's going to explode, and God help those that aren't prepared. I'm betting it will make the Great Depression of the 30's look like a stroll in the park. IMHO

^^ What Destroyer just said X 1000.

Randleman, I got out totally in January 2008. Had a bad feeling. People thought I was crazy.

Around september/october I was glad I did. Haven't lost any sleep yet over it.

Prefer to have more direct control over things. If I want to gamble I buy a couple mega millions lotto tickets when it gets up past 300 million or so.

My fuel pump just died on the Tahoe, the garage wanted $700 to $750 to replace:fight: Autozone wanted $240 for the pump. I went online to Rockauto and got it with shipping 2 days for $125!!!!!! After a calm nice 5 hours with a few short breaks the new pump is in and working!!!!!!!
Thanks to my son and nephew.
The worse part was not being able to do anything!! Just sat and watched, advised a little but not being able to get down and help I did not know a few things cause I could not see them :cen::cen:
O well its a done deal!! But I remeber when they were just a few bucks not all that long ago!!

Yep, I have started buying most all of my parts from ROCKAUTO. They get delivered to my door, most of the time I cna get OEM parts, and pay less than the cheap aftermarket ones from the parts stores. In the last year I have seen most things go up by 50%, if not more.