Past Recessions and Oil Prices
The combination of having less money to spend and having everything cost more impacts consumer spending. So while higher oil prices mean boom times for people in the oil industry, they have also preceded the last five recessions.
However, this could also be the case of confirmation bias. There are a wide variety of factors that affect economic growth with oil prices being just one, and oil prices can be notoriously fickle over time. Pricier oil can slow economic growth elsewhere, but expensive gas during a time of prosperity won’t necessarily cause a 180 all on its own.
There was a brief peak in prices in 1996, for instance, that did little to arrest the internet-fueled boom times of the 1990s.
