The last time the average price of a gallon gas under 3 dollars a gallon was in December 2010. The trend has been higher for a decade now. But look at this, right here in December 2010. It was the last time you saw it below. And here, while you have super low prices here but that was because of global financial crisis. So, why is that so high? A few reasons here. First, global instability. No surprise, the Arab Spring began in December 2010. About the same time, this oil run started.Syria concerns, more recently have kept oil prices high. The world wants more oil and we're still rising demand for gas in developing world, places like China and India. We're not seeing the cheap supplies that we're used to, right? We're getting fuel from fracking and deep water platforms and that is expensive and tightening supply and demand is something like investors are watching. It keeps the prices rising when you see this, this fundamental shifts, investors demanding here that investor demand also driving up the price of crude oil. So, is this the new normal? Well, we ask Tom Clozes, a chief oil analyst for gas but says this is where we are now. By the end of the new year, by the end of the year and the new year, you could see maybe 3 bucks a gallon. Of course, all that depends on Syria and whether conflict can be peacefully resolved there. It also depends on the Fed. If the Fed should begin to taper back its bond purchases, that could mean demand for commodities would go down, demand for things like oil, investor demand oil and that could mean lower gas prices ahead. So, watch those 2 things: Syria and the Fed. That could matter how much you're paying for a gallon of gas.   

 

You heard Christine says the Fed. She's talking about the US federal reverse, the country's central bank. It's responsible for implementing monetary policies. Basically, the Fed controls the country's money supply. In recent years, the Fed has bought bonds and other kinds of securities to try to help the struggling US economy. It's a practice called quantitative easing. Christine mentioned the possibility of the Fed backing off that practice. Yesterday, the federal reverse announced it won't. The Fed said it doesn't see enough improvement in the economy right now. So, it's going to keep buying bonds at the same rate for at least other month. That news went over well on Wall Street. The Dow Jones average and S&P 500. They give an idea of how the whole stock market is doing. They both jumped to record levels yesterday after the Fed's announcement. In the US, a person making just over 11,500 dollars a year is living below the poverty line. For a family of 4, it's just under 23,500. What surprising is that 15% Americans are living in poverty now. According to a new report by the US census, it's the 3rd year in a row that the poverty rate has been at or above 15%. The last time it was that high for this long was 1965. You'd be right to blame the great recession for part of this. It's same a lot of folks in the poverty but the recession officially ended in June of 2009. Poverty peaked the next year. What worries many economies is that it hasn't significantly decreased since then. One analyst put it like this: The US economy has been growing but that hasn't made a difference yet to many US citizens. Jobs have been coming back but they are just not paying as much. Right now, the median household income is 51,000 dollars a year. In 2007, it was higher and more than 55,000 dollars.