Actually, the break even point on expensive oil drilling using fracking was about $65 a barrel, and I don't expect to see that price again for a while. Oil could drop another $10-20 a barrel and still be very profitable. Kind of loving expensive oil except for the short term political difficulties...will definitely accelerate moves towards alternatives, mostly renewables which are now the cheapest to bring on line. I doubt that bankers have much to do with oil prices, outside of the few that actually make plays in the futures markets. The commodity market players pay attention to their own calculations, speculate according to their own algorithms and greed/fear tolerances; a lot of money is lost in these trades as well as profits taken.

Getting a boost from parents or their estates to buy a home is a huge advantage, one reason that black and brown families have found it so tough to move up the wealth ladder. Our experiences sound similar, folks divorced the summer I graduated high school, I was emancipated and on my own from age 18 on. Didn't even think of college, didn't think that U.S. society would last long enough for a degree to be relevant (HS class of '69) went underground to avoid the draft and Vietnam and figured real life skills like construction would be more valuable in surviving Revolution/Apocalypse by 1984 than a fancy piece of paper. Shows just how easy it is to be wrong...as Yogi Berra once said, "Prediction is hard, particularly about the future";)