If Peak Oil is here, the Bailout won't work

NVDL: Why do I say that? Because you can fix a sinking ship if it's got a leak. Peak Oil is an order of magnitude like an iceberg knifing through the Titanic. Why? Because our entire homeostasis - financial, economic, social, geographic - is based on energy. Plentiful cheap energy. When you start to run out of fundamental resources, where are the economics and finances to keep growing your markets? The answer is, there aren't. And the reality is, we are already into advanced terminal decline. We already use up 4 barrels of oil for every new barrel we find. For every calorie of food, it requires 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce. Think that's sustainable? Does the Fed's money grow on trees?

Yahoo: In a statement Monday, President Bush said that “the whole world is watching to see if we can act quickly to shore up our markets and prevent damage to our capital markets, businesses, our housing sector and retirement accounts.”

What the president didn’t say is that the whole world will be watching to see not just if Washington can act but whether Washington’s actions can still make a difference.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Lawmakers raised doubts Monday about what would be the largest government bailout in American history, but a bigger, more terrifying question lurked right under the surface: What if it doesn’t work? “The alternative is complete financial Armageddon and a great depression,” said a former Federal Reserve official. “Where do they go after this? Well, the U.S. government could nationalize the banking system outright.” A few months ago, that idea would have been laughed out of the room. Paulson briefs reporters in Washington, DC on September 15. World markets slid amid mounting concerns over a massive bailout for the US financial system, as haggling over the fine print sparked investor impatience and a spike in oil and gold.(AFP/File/Jim Watson)"> But no one’s laughing anymore. So what’s Plan B? There really isn’t one.