Rich Zeoli Talks To La Salle Professor About Falling Oil Prices
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – La Salle University Finance professor Dr. Walter Schubert talked with Rich Zeoli on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT about falling oil prices and their impact on the U.S. economy.
Schubert thinks the current state of gas prices will provide a significant boost to American production.
"I think, actually, this is going to be a great benefit and I think you will see more manufacturing in the United States. People forget that the United States is still quite a large manufacturing country. It's not as big as China, but we still manufacture a lot of things, and this is going to put a lot of money in American pockets and they're going to spending it, for the most part, locally. It's going to help the economy a lot."
He believes that while prices will not continue to drop, they also will not spike immediately either.
"Coming right ahead of our cold weather, this is just a tremendous benefit to the people of our region...It's conceivable that we could be looking at this, sort of, $1.98 thing, but I would say we should expect it to stabilize above the current the price. Once things stabilize, hopefully, we won't go back up above $3, which I think would still be quite beneficial for the economy, but I'm thinking lower than that even."
Schubert said that despite the lowest gas prices that we've seen in years, this is not the best time to introduce new gas taxes.
"It is often a good time to put something in when things are good and the consumer just isn't noticing as much because he's got falling underlying price and then, of course, as prices goes back up, the tax doesn't go up, the tax stays the same and so the consumer doesn't necessarily see that loss. But for me, right now, I think this is actually a very good time for us to take advantage of the benefit it's going to drive the economy in spending and not raise those taxes. We should pick up more tax revenues in income growth and even property growth."