Sorry, but this is not just a market adjustment.
The Saudi's are trying to protect their market share by pushing the price below the point where horizontal drilling and fracking is no longer profitable.
Lower gasoline prices (and heating oil, and natural gas, and diesel, and jet fuel) are good. But, it comes at a price.
Since Texas is really the only state that has survived Obama's Great Recession, the rest of the US only looks good when Texas is averaged when them. Without Texas, the rest of the US has yet to even recover, much less grow....
I personally don’t care why the price of oil has decreased so much, other than the fact that it hurts Iran, ISIS, other unfriendly countries, and Russia.
The Saudis are threatened by those countries, not fracking in the U.S. The Saudis did not have to drive the price down to the current levels to combat fracking. They would have accomplished that at $60/bbl.
So Texas is the “salvation” of the country and California is in the dumper?
Why don’t you take a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP
The fact remains, that California’s economy is far larger than that of Texas still today. I guess it’s still true that “everything is big in Texas,” even when analyzing economic statistics. Oil price declines will hurt Texas.