Recession

You sure that food prices haven't gone up because it takes diesel to make the trucks run, which in turn carry your food to your supermarkets? etc

This is right, the inflation of gasoline has caused everything to go up to a degree. Those delivery trucks need to charge more to haul the food, so the customer feels the reprecussions of that as supermarkets must charge more.

In my opinion there is no way around the inflating gas prices. Our generation is the first to be dependent on another country's exports. I liked the discovery channel show on the earth being depleted of gasoline by 2020 or something like that. I dont recall the exact year they gave, but its irrelevant, the important part from it is that it has been predicted to happen.

War does cause more national debt, but that hardly contributes to loss of jobs, etc. I believe the nation will enter a recession though when all the 'baby boomers' retire. All those seniors collecting their 401ks and SS, and all their jobs being filled with new workers making minimum. The entire middle class will be no more, an hour glass effect if you will, either you'll be rich or poor. More on this 'hour glass effect' can be found in the Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki (author of "Rich dad poor dad" another great read) book "Why we want you to be rich".