but what?  Does this mean the entire country will decline slowly into a recession except for Texas or the other oil and gas states?  What does this mean, ultimately, for the economy in the next year.  We are not economists, but remember the gas crisis years ago.

For some reason, indicators seems to lag reality.  For a while it looked like rising gas prices were not going to hurt the economy, but now the situation appears less certain.
    From where I stand as an observer of the economy, it looks like the recovery that was happening has peeked, probaly did so a month ago, eventhough hiring appears to be on the rise.  My guess is that hiring will re-align itself with the economy once employers see sales dropping and inventory building.  It would be interesting to see where the jobs are being created.  If they are being created across a broad array of skillsets then that would bode well for sustained progress sometime in the future.  But if they are service jobs, then the gains are just a continuation of what has been happening for several years, in several administrations, good, high paying jobs being lost and lower skilled, lower paying ones being created - the alignment with the economy will happen because people who do not have well paying jobs cannot buy as much without getting into massive debt, the capacity of most people for more debt seems to have been exhausted.

ya right!

i suppose the prices lower when the price of oil lowers as well!!have you seen the profits of BP and Shell lately?

The most interesting thing I've seen on that front is that stated reserves are being downgraded. I believe it was BP that had to restate it's reserves downward meaning it has far less oil it can reach than had been reported.

There are even questions as to whether or not Saudi Arabia is REALLY sitting on as much oil as it says it has.

it was Shell who had fiddled the figures of it's oil reserves, leading to its CEO resigning