Only four months after peaking at an unheard of $4.11 a gallon, the national average price for gasoline tumbled below $2 Friday, its lowest point in more than three years. | Here in Baltimore, at the heart of a high-tax state, prices are in the low $1.80 range. |
| Here in suburban Chicago, the heart of taxes and corruption, it's now $1.95. |
There was muted joy for consumers wading through an economy that's almost certainly in recession, with thousands of jobs being lost and mortgage foreclosures continuing to rise to record levels.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, where oil futures seemed destined to breach $200 just a few months ago, pessimism was an understatement. "At this point, all we can say with any degree of confidence is that crude oil ... will not trade below zero," trader and analyst Stephen Schork said Friday in a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the market's swoon.
Crude has been in free-fall, shedding two-thirds of its value since July, and gasoline prices have followed. Some say oil could be headed below $40 a barrel, and gasoline below $1.50.
Motorists in Independence, Mo., on Friday said they were paying $1.37 for a gallon of gas.