“For the great majority of Americans who don’t happen to work in the financial industry, the ramifications of all this turmoil on Wall Street remain hard to assess. ATMs are still dispensing cash, credit card offers keep arriving in the mail, and it’s not even all that hard to get a mortgage — if your credit’s okay and you can actually afford the monthly payments. There is less lending overall, and that depresses economic activity. But with oil prices dropping again today, the single greatest scourge of American consumers this year — the high price of gasoline — is due for a further pullback. In New York and a few hard-hit real estate markets, this is a big-time crisis, the biggest since the Great Depression. For the rest of the country, the jury’s still out.”

–Times, Financial Meltdowns: How Big a Blow to the Economy?