The winners and the losers

Winner: The State Board of Education is trying to stay a step ahead of hard times by urging districts and charter schools to make deep, but responsible, cuts to its budgets. The eventual recommendations will be forwarded to the Legislature. Good move. It's far better for educators to make these cuts than for lawmakers, who tend to use butcher knives rather than surgical scalpels.

Loser: The public often grumbles that gasoline prices inch down slowly when oil prices decline but that they jump back up immediately at the first sign of an increase, as if launched from a gun. The past few days have been evidence of that. Retailers, of course, must charge what they need in order to cover the cost of the next fuel delivery, which explains this phenomenon. But while prices haven't jumped nearly back to where they were last summer, and while they are likely to come down again soon, this yo-yo effect is hard on everyone who drives.

Loser: Mark Zandi, chief economist and co-founder of Moody's Economy.com, told a Utah audience this week that people won't begin feeling good about the economy again until 2011. Right now, that seems a long way off. The hope is that by then people won't have forgotten how to feel good about the economy.