West Texas Intermediate crude dropped below 100 dollars a barrel.  The lowest price per barrel since May.  This happened earlier this week.  You may ask if it’s a sign of things to come.  We see a couple of things here.  One is demand destruction, which means the high cost of gasoline is cooling demand and possibly easing tight supplies.  A larger reason, according to many analysts, is fear of a recession.

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A severe nosedive across the world economy could reverse the market and leave it with a glut of oil.  Recall the summer of 2008?  I was spending well in excess of four dollars a gallon for unleaded regular.  By Christmas, I was paying under a buck fifty.  Millions were also out of work and the future was very uncertain as we entered what came to be known as the Great Recession.

Let’s say prices drop a little and then stabilize.  What would you then consider a bargain at the pumps?  Four dollars a gallon?  Clearly, it’s better than five and a half dollars and the nearly six dollars a gallon I saw last week while traveling.  We may be conditioned for a much higher floor for a gallon of fuel.

If I’m selling you a product and I raise the price by two dollars for a prolonged period, then cut a dollar, you could believe you’re somehow catching a break.

It’s called conditioning.  The new normal!  The trade-off for really low prices may not be worthwhile.  My dad told me gas was eight gallons for a dollar during the Great Depression.  I was impressed until he told me nobody had any money.

LOOK: The most expensive weather and climate disasters in recent decades

Stacker ranked the most expensive climate disasters by the billions since 1980 by the total cost of all damages, adjusted for inflation, based on 2021 data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The list starts with Hurricane Sally, which caused $7.3 billion in damages in 2020, and ends with a devastating 2005 hurricane that caused $170 billion in damage and killed at least 1,833 people. Keep reading to discover the 50 of the most expensive climate disasters in recent decades in the U.S.

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