BY MURRAY SABRIN

COMMENTARY

While driving back from the Hackensack Costco on Sunday, where the blue laws were suspended, and seeing so many gas stations closed, it dawned on me that the oil companies and the the big box stores, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, Target, etc., could have come to the rescue by leasing–or donating–generators to the gas stations that lost power and cannot pump the gas out of their tanks.

Whether this would have eliminated the short-term shortage is doubtful, but at least more gas would have been flowing to drivers who have to now wait hours in line. Of course, prices should rise to reflect the demand/supply reality but that obviously is too much common sense for our intrepid leaders to contemplate.

Where are the creative folks in corporate America? And what a PR coup for “big business” if they had been proactive and used a little imagination.

Murray Sabrin, a professor of finance at Ramapo College of New Jersey in Mahwah, has been a candidate for statewide office on both the Republican and Libertarian Party lines.