David Zervos hits on a few good points about the current credit crisis and why it’s different from 2008. One minor quibble: in some energy-sector-intensive states, energy employment can be 3-7% of the total, and a collapse in oil prices will affect that region more than the US as a whole. Further, since we are now producing so much of our own oil and gas, a drop in the price hurts a significant part of the business complex and reduces total profits; so ironically, we don’t feel the effect of the “reverse oil tax” or the drop in the price of energy as much as we used to.