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Thanks to growing fears that the United States has entered a prolonged recession – with some saying we’re about to see the second Great Depression – the price of oil fell over $10 per barrel today and closed below $100 for the first time since last Monday.

Most of today’s market action – marked by the DOW’s single largest daily point drop, the S&P and NASDAQ both losing roughly nine percent and oil’s second largest daily price decline – came about thanks to Congress balking at the proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

This bailout, which was agreed upon in principle Sunday evening, was meant to help restore confidence in the financial markets by having the Treasury Department buy hard to value mortgage backed securities from struggling financial firms in an effort to get them lending to each other, businesses and consumers.

In addition to the House’s vote, several European bank failures helped to push the dollar up against the euro.Â As I’m sure you’ve come to find out over the past several months, a stronger dollar tends to push commodity prices lower.

In turn, the price of gasoline continued to fall, and is now at a national average price of $3.60 per gallon.Â Currently, Oklahoma is reporting the lowest statewide average price at $3.29 per gallon, while Hawaii is reporting the highest statewide average price at $4.34 per gallon.

The price of gas has fallen roughly 10 cents over the past week, and is now roughly 13% below the record highs set back in mid-July.Â While this is certainly good news given our weak economy, we still can’t take too much solace in the recent price drop, especially considering prices are still 30% higher than what they were last year.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see how the markets react tomorrow if some sort of accord isn’t reached tonight or early tomorrow morning regarding the bailout.Â (As a side note, I think I’m for the bailout, but I haven’t completely made up my mind.)

While it would certainly be nice to have oil and gasoline prices contiue to drop, if it means I’m going to be worried about my job, it’s not like I’ll be rejoicing.Â And I’m sure I’m not alone in this one.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?