aaa reports the national average stands at $2.19 for a gallon of regular unleaded. and to think we paid more than 5 bucks last summer out in the hamptons. wow! that s down $1.13 from a year ago on average nationally. analysts predict drivers will save about $97 billion overall this year due to those lower gas prices. that s about 750 bucks a household. john bussey is executive business editor and assistant managing editor for the wall street journal newspaper. who d have thought? who d have thought, and that s a lot of money per household. you can read this one of two ways great for the economy, because the consumer s going to be happier about having the extra money to spend, and you re seeing this reflected in consumer sentiment polls, consumer sentiment, and confidence is up over the last several weeks. or you could say, hey, wait a second, oil dropping this much so fast, how about that camp that says this is a reflection of slowing economic growth around the world, and that s
right? shouldn t we blame practices in place at bank of america and wells fargo. joining me to answer that, executive business editor of the huffington post and author of past due. also shawna smith, the president of the national fair housing alliance. lynette cox who is co-founder of ask the money coach.com and author of zero debt for college grads. i ll be talking to her later. and peter, let me start with you, what is the problem of housing prices for responsible homeowners. you hit part of it already. you had this predatory system, wall street hungering for higher risk assets because the world seemed so safe in the housing bubble. investors were pouring into anything with more risk. you had a retail operation in memphis, baltimore, where wells fargo targeted people with lower
the shuttle smashed into the side of the trailer. crews took 16 people to hospitals and a spokeswoman says at least two are seriously hurt. hackers in iran reportedly accessed software that runs u.s. oil and gas pipelines. that s according to the wall street journal owned by the parent company of our network. hackers recently stepped up so called infiltration missions against american energy companies. the government denies hacking anybody. john busy is executive business editor for the wall street journal. what to make of this? this is kind of the next step, more serious than launching denial of service attacks on bank websites. the iranians went into the pipeline and energy companies along the canadian border looking at how to control the
off on it. what they can do now is re-instate the tax cuts. gerri: extend them. shepard: the president is vetoing them for the richest. if they don t do anything they expire if everyone. the fiscal cliff has had problems and impact on how corporations are doing business. gerri: these are new numbers, the wall street journal put these out saying that overall spending by companies is down 1.3 percent and capital spending down, as well. companies are retrenching, spending less. they decided they want to spend husband h spend less because this is uncertainty. gerri: we need the companies to hire people and expand and open more plants around the world and in the united states. shepard: that would be nice. we have the executive
shepard: a phone company is take the f.b.i. to court after they sent a secret letter demanding they turn over customer records. in what could become one of the biggest legal fights over the aspect of the patriot act. that counterterrorism law passed in the bush administration expanded the government s ability to collect information about its own citizens. now the wall street journal which our parent company owns, reports that after the phone company challenged the national security letter, the justice department filed its own civil complaint accusing the company of interfering with the united states seven interests. court documents by the wall street journal did not reveal the name of the phone company and the executive business editor of wall street journal joins us now. this is interesting, isn t it? there is a story in today s paper and it is about how much