Oil  has always been a tough sector to nail down since you never know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing for oil prices to go up or down.  Oil has rebounded from 40 dollars a barrel and hit 70 today after another up day for crude but if you search oil prices in google news, the three top articles offer conflicting views; Reuters argues that the rise in oil prices will help investors by boosting energy stocks’ earnings up substantially, while the other two claim that the detriment of high oil prices to the american consumer is too great.  I tend to be of the second shop and believe that the detriment far outweighs the opportunity.  As a result of the rising oil prices, gas has now reached 3 dollars a gallon which, while short of last summer’s 4 dollars, is bound to increase as the summer continues and as hurricane season arrives.  Amidst greater job losses than the Obama administration expected, the number of jobless Americans having to contend with higher and higher gas prices.  At the end of the day, it is quite possible that investment opportunities will open up because of the higher gas prices and higher earnings for energy companies and they will be consolidated by upper income brackets that have money with which to invest.  However, the majority of the lower/middle classes that are losing jobs and will continue to lose more jobs do not invest their money directly and will not be able to micromanage in order to take advantage of the increases in energy stock earnings.  Nonetheless, they are still drastically hurt by the higher prices which make their lives harder to run and more costly to run.  Without jobs, these people will suffer more and more, ultimately hurting our overall economic prospects directly because of these higher oil prices.