NEW YORK (Money magazine) -
With crude oil hovering around $30 a barrel and a gallon of gasoline topping $2 in some parts of the country, fuel prices this year have been at the highest levels in 20 years.
The high cost of energy has slowed the recovery, siphoning off money that could have been spent on clothes, entertainment or computers and putting it into the coffers of OPEC and other oil-exporting nations.
More on Energy
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The economists at Merrill Lynch reckon that each additional penny per gallon that Americans pay at the pump dampens other forms of consumer spending by $1 billion.
"That's something investors might want to consider while they're going out and buying consumer-electronics stocks like crazy," says Merrill's chief stock market strategist, Richard Bernstein.
While such sentiments could easily be written off as sour grapes from one of Wall Street's more prominent bears, history is on Bernstein's side. Over the past 40 years, the United States has witnessed four major spikes in oil prices -- in 1974, 1980, 1990 and 2000. Each one preceded or coincided with a recession.
So just how much financial havoc is being wrought by the high cost of energy? Below we gauge the impact on the economy, on the stock market and on the 2004 election.
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