The one thing that will happen is inflation. While the price of oil has been going up, much of the recent rise is the lowering of the value of the dollar. A lot of that has been because the Federal Reserve is lowering it's value due to the credit crunch. Higher inflation is soon going to be a fact.

The one good thing about that is that people will nto want to hold money, so they will seek to spend it. If we have inflation, a dollar loses value over time, so spending it is the solution. You also may have no choice but to spend more, because things cost more. So, we will not have a repeat of the deflationary 1920s-30s, when holding your money was a good idea, because no one had any.