Did the price of oil trigger the recession

Remarkable as it might sound the cheap price of oil in the 1990's may well have started a chain of events into which we are now being propelled.

That is at laest according to a paper presented at the Brookings Institution by James Hamilton.

Derek Thompson summarises it well in this piece at the Atlantic

Cheap gasoline from the 1990s into this decade encouraged families to set up their homes farther from the cities where they worked. But as the price of gas began to increase, it put a big strain of these families' commutes. With gas rising from $2 to $4, the price of these long drives doubled, straining those families' most expensive payments, namely: mortgages. When families realized they could not afford their exurban commutes, they sold their homes for a big loss. Voila: Their mortgage crisis became a bank crisis and the rest is our living history.