Falling Gas Prices Offset the Sequester?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Gasoline prices continue to tick down, and more experts have commented that this should help improve mediocre gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the United States. CNN Money offered a story that said this about gas prices and the economy:

If prices stay that low, the savings for drivers over the course of a year could top $80 billion. That’s $80 billion to spend on other things like clothes, electronics or entertainment.

“To put that into context, it is roughly the same size as the sequestration spending cuts that took effect at the start of last month,” researchers at Capital Economics wrote in a recent note. As a result, economic growth “might not be as bad as we had initially feared.”

AAA Fuel Gauge numbers show that the price of a gallon of regular gas nationwide was $3.505 yesterday, compared with $3.650 a month ago and $3.830 a year ago. The price of premium based on the national average is down to $3.841 from a year-ago price of $4.108. In several states, a gallon of regular has dropped below $3.30.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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