I know I, like many of you, have been celebrating the recent decline in gas prices.  It is like it is 2003 all over again.  The price at the pump as dropped nearly half of what is was just a few months ago.  And on a personal note, I was living in California the last 6 years, but now have returned to Texas, so I am experiencing an extra 30 cent drop on top.  What once was a stressful experience to fill my tank, has again become just a normal cost of working and living. 
This has got me to think that this is one of, if not the largest, but at the very least an under discussed causes of the economic slow down over the last year.  I believe that the huge jump in gas prices over the last few years has directly influenced the real estate, mortgage, banking, auto and subsequent stock melt down. 
We can argue that too many loans were given to those who just could not afford it or whether mortgage brokers passed loans on when they shouldn't have. I believe that both the lender and the lendee thought that they were okay.  Think about it.  More than likely the new home owner was buying a home in the suburbs, farther from where they worked then before.  Maybe they took into account the increased driving distance to work, or maybe they didn't because it was so low at the time.  But as the price of oil increased, and the driving distance to work increased, things got a little hairy.  Not to mention that the price of things we all need like food, which are connected to the price of fuel, also increased.  At some point the average person has to make a decision.  Do I not fill up my tank to go to work?  No.  Do I not buy food for my family?  No. For those living in colder climates, do I not heat my home for my family? No.  Do I hold off on paying my mortgage until things get better? Yes.  Do I not buy that big gas gussling SUV right now?  Yes. 
Now as far as the auto industry goes they should have been more proactive and worked on fuel efficient cars sooner and not put all their chips down on SUVs and trucks that were bringing in the dollars,  but that is for another day. 
But let us look at thing now.  Gas is down.  And as a person not living in a cold climate, I'm assuming the price of heating oil is also down.  So I believe that most peoples day to day pocket books will be larger that they were a year ago.  And this is a good thing.  Now with all the craziness over the last few months most people are not in the mood to spend too much.  But that is only bad if that last for several months. 
So where do we go from here?  1) I would suggest that we don't forget the crys over the summer to 'Drill Baby, Drill'.  One of the biggest bludders, in my opinion, was ridiculous refusal to drill for more oil domestically earlier in the decade.  If we had been able to push pass the crazy enviromentalist who fight against new oil exploration six years ago, the oil would be flowing from ANWAR and our coasts.  They don't seem to understand that oil drilling has become more enviromentally freindly over the past few decades.  ANWAR will not be harmed.  And as far as off shore drilling goes, we are talking 50 miles off the coast, I lived in California for a time and you are not going to see 50 miles off the coast.  2) Auto industries have to forget about the cash cows of SUVs and trucks.  Now I am a Texan so I know how we love our big trucks but that can not be the auto industries main focus.  In addition this idea of flex fuel cars is not solving anything.  All it is doing is increasing food cost and I have never seen an ethonal station in my life.  Make gas cars that are more fuel efficient.  I know you can do it, you sell them all over Europe.
There is nothing wrong with beleiving that the future of this planet is going to be one without petroleum fuel.  But lets not cut off our nose despite our face.  If the auto industries has to make less cars then they need to get into other products that will keep their factory jobs.  Call up T. Boone Pickens and help make wind turbines.  Get with the oil industy and help make machines to drill for oil faster and more enviromentally freindly.  Get with the government and find out what they need to upgrade the inferstucture (bridges, levees, and roads).
If we can keep oil cheap as long as we can, it fill filter down to everyone and sustain the economic engine that drives this country and all the hard working peolpe living in America.