Local gasoline prices have dropped from this a month ago...
to this today...
As oil has dropped from the mid-$70s to the lower-$60s.
Oil speculators... including OPEC... were convinced that they could move the price of these commodities higher because speculators on Wall Street had moved the stock market higher. They were playing off each other rather than reality. The DJIA has dropped some 600 points during the same time.
The reality is that the economy is not getting better. It may not be worsening as much, but a slower decline is hardly an "improvement." That is simply PR talk similar to the way that our state government has said that there are "budget cuts" when they are talking about not increasing the budget as much as they wanted.
Until business perceives that the government is not going to continually change the rules of the game, there will be a reluctance to commit resources and hire people. And until that happens, the economy will languish.
The government is trying to push the economy higher with mandates, taxes, and higher spending; but it needs the private sector to pull it higher with real demand...