Reply #60: MAN! I am so glad to see someone say this! You mention oil around

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here, and more specifically peak oil, which is really just the beginning of declining oil producition, and you thought of as nutso by the majority of the DU population. But the simple and underlying factor in all of this is peak oil.

Yes, there was a housing bubble. But the bubble was burst by the increase in oil prices due to demand from the growing economies of China and India, whose populations far outstrip ours. And, as there always is, there has been a fair amount of manipulation and criminality involved in bringing us to where we are now. But the one common thread running through all of this is the inability of oil producers to keep up with the demand of oil in a growth boom. And, in the process, oil was produced at an accelerated pace that has brought us now over the peak and into an irreversible and relentless decline in production. Even our own government has acknowledged the problem with oil with the Hirsch Report (which is now seriously outdated, though prescient nontheless) and with both the bush and Obama administrations push (remember bush's 'We are addicted to oil.' line at the SOTU?) to develop alternative energy technologies.

Anyway, it's a complicated issue and dynamic phenomenon that can effect our lives in profound ways and is able to hide amongst all the problems it causes.