{
  "id": 7813952,
  "title": "Interactive Brokers Senior Economist Shares The Oil Price That Finally Breaks The American Consumer",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/16/interactive-brokers-senior-economist-shares-the-oil-price-that",
  "topic": "finance",
  "section": "Finance & Markets",
  "published": "2026-09-16T15:16:56.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Yahoo Finance",
    "slug": "yahoo-finance",
    "url": "https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/interactive-brokers-senior-economist-shares-151656371.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Interactive Brokers senior economist Jose Torres has warned that oil prices reaching $120 a barrel could break American consumer spending. This threshold is 20% above the current price of WTI crude. The national average price of regular gasoline jumped 16 cents to $4.32 a gallon on September 14, 2026, pushing it to the 90th percentile of the past year and marking a 7.8% increase in one month. The proximate cause is the surge in WTI crude to $97.26 a barrel on September 9, after rising 16.1% in a month. Brent has also traded through the $100 line. Torres' threshold, though not a forecast, is a specific number in a debate that typically relies on speculation. The last time WTI reached this neighborhood was in June 2022 at $114.84, following a summer that saw the fastest tightening cycle in forty years. The household savings rate has decreased to 2.8% in Q2 2026, down from 6.2% in Q1 2024, and consumer sentiment sits at 55.2, well below the recessionary threshold. Credit card APRs are also high at 20.94%. Gasoline spending in the national accounts has risen from $401.7 billion in July 2025 to $490.4 billion in July 2026, representing an approximately $90 billion reduction in pre-tax income.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}