Find the answer in the two simple graphs below. When energy became expensive, Americans could no longer find pays to pay for it (because they were no longer making anything of substance, other than phantom finance).
In theory of course, it is possible to produce many other 'real things' to export to the rest of the world to earn those oil imports. For three decades, the United States did that quite successfully. Oil was relatively cheap and booming domestic industries had lots to export. Eventually though, manufacturing moved overseas to developing nations where it could be done more 'efficiently'. Instead of developing other 'real things', the United States turned to credit and the power of its US dollar hegemony to keep the consumer economy ticking. Based on this next chart, I suggest that the descent into a 'fake things' economy began around 1990 when household net worth started to decline.
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clipped from anz.theoildrum.com
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