I still say the problem is the gas prices. I am going to make a lot of people mad for this but we should be paying $6 per gallon. We should have been paying $4 per gallon back in 2000. We did not keep gas prices with inflation and the rest of the world and when they jumped 300% people were not ready for it.
I just talked to my uncle who owns a Shell gas station in Ohio and he said the first 3/4 of the year his sales were only off 1.2%, basically nothing. People did not change their habits, they just bought gas first and let the other bills slide. If gas would have slowly raised in price the car companies would still be selling cars, homes would not be going back to the bank at such a rate, and stocks would be stronger.
Chris