Will Lower Gas Prices Loosen Your Purse Strings?

Yesterday I paid $1.99 a gallon for regular gas here in San Jose, which after filling up my tank amounted to a mere $35. After that, I headed across the street to grocery shop at the semi-gourmet market near our house. I figured that the approximately $50 dollars I saved since the price of gas had come down from somewhere around $4.40 a gallon allowed me to loosen the purse strings a bit at my next stop. Which brings me to the following question: Could the economic downturn that our country is now experiencing have been avoided if the price of crude oil had not been so exorbitant and if companies like ExxonMobile had trimmed their profit margins? I wonder how much of the current woes of the Big Three auto makers is caused by the glut of the market with fuel hungry SUVs that simply sat gaining rust on the dealership lots when gas prices shot through the roof. Do you feel a little more inclined to spend a bit more this Christmas now that you aren't squandering your savings on gas? Will these lower prices act as an economic stimulus package supplied by the oil and gas corporations?

This also leads me to wonder how many businesses are now feeling a pinch because gas prices have come down so dramatically. This summer, when fuel costs were at their highest, an article came out in the San Jose Mercury News about the sudden huge demand for motor scooters. Steve and I had been talking for a while about getting a scooter, so we decided to head to a couple of dealerships to take a peek. The Honda dealership? Back ordered for two months. Another shop we visited had about five scooters left. A 2006 model sat on the showroom floor with a sold sign on it, having languished for two years before being snapped up in the current boom. At the Vespa dealership, they had about five scooters left, but suggested that we buy that weekend or they'd be gone. Everyone was planning on stocking up and new scooter shops were opening. Gas sipping scooters seemed like a great investment. Flash forward to the economic downturn and plummeting gas prices. I wonder how many 2008 scooter models now sit gathering dust on showroom floors everywhere.