Global oil production peaked in May of 2005. Despite the "Drill baby, drill!" mantra we're never going to equal that production number even if we go at it with a will; the oil that is left is in small, or deep, or sour pools. Small means more work to find them, deep means more work to get to them, and sour means more time, capital, and energy has to be spent cleaning out sulfur and metals before they can be used. They won't be there in the volume we need and their EROI, or energy return on input, is too low to maintain our current high energy lifestyle.
Our banking system is crashing. The bailout accomplishes nothing except injecting nearly a trillion dollars we can't afford back into the casino on lower Manhattan; any pretense of investment has long been discarded – the word 'bet' appears far too often in the financial press in conjunction with activities there. There is talk of this problem getting into the "real" economy, which is both offensive and true at the same time; businesses that actually do something are closing due to the effects of the massive fraud of Wall Street.
Either of these effects would have killed Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. Taken together it is obvious that it's time for a dramatic downsizing in many ways.
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