[goldstategop]

Like deflation is a bad thing.

Consumers would save billions of dollars on everything - from food to gas to rent.

Methinks they doth protest too much.

[BlackVeil]

Thank you for posting this - a most important topic. I have been wondering a lot about this. The fall in oil prices could bring down a lot of marginal players. That wouldn’t matter, except that the banking system, running true to form, is linked in with them.

[GeronL]

crazy. Cheaper energy is a good thing.

[Vince Ferrer]

Certainly smaller and less diversified companies can go out of businesses. But others can start up again when the price rises again. In the meantime, the non oil producing part of the economy is benefiting.

[Revolutionary]

The Saudis are intentionally pushing down the price to slow or halt the fracking boom with a side benefit of giving Putin pause.

However, if memory serves, it would take $60 oil to start hitting the more costly fracking; about $50 for the oil sands and $40 for the less costly fracking. So there is still quite a bit of margin left.

[clearcarbon]

Lower oil prices should mean lower production costs for all products made from petroleum. That’s a lot of stuff.

[familyop]

American-"based" production done by slaves on foreign, communist soil has made us all rich in this magic economy. If oil prices crash, just heave the money into the fake stock market or fake bonds. Ain't it somethin', how that works? And the gobblers of propaganda continue to "buy that for a quarter" (Cyril Kornbluth, "The Marching Morons").

[A CA Guy]

So less profits to pay off loans puts banks into trouble.

Well, I guess the bank gets to own some oil fields.

[ryan71]

Trouble for US oilers and US economy???

Question is...What’s obama’s role in this?