[Istlota]

There are several factors contributing to the current worldwide economic depression:

1. The value of USD ain't what it used to be. Hence, even in the US, we are paying more USD for the same goods.
2. At the same time that the value of USD has dropped, wages have also dropped. Tens of thousands of people who had good paying jobs a year ago are now either unemployed or working on a new job for a lot less take home pay.
3. It is erroneous to say that we have an oil shortage when we are able to pump tens of millions of barrels of oil out of the ground every _day_. If we adopted reasonable fuel conservation measures, the world would have more than enough oil for many generations to come. But, that just ain't in our collective cultural DNA. We are using more oil than ever before and the worst oil consumers in the world, we spoiled bullies here in the US, have no intention of changing our ways until the house burns down with us in it. No matter how much oil we can get our hands on, we will find ways to consume more. Our three choices for POTUS 2008 --- Obama, Hillary, and McCain --- all have energy plans which focus on developing _more_ sources of energy for us to waste. Hence, the oil will eventually run out -- not because it is in short supply now, but because the _demand_ is so great. And, per the law of supply and demand, since demand will continue to skyrocket, price will continue to skyrocket as well. Where is all that extra money coming from? You and me. Where is it going? Into the already deep pockets of the oil barons.
4. But, the Law of Supply and Demand assumes "Perfect Competition", which is not 100% true with the oil barons. There are a lot of oil barons, in a lot of nations around the world, which ought to make it a free enterprise. But, their greed enables them to function as one monopoly. Hence, to maximize profits, they all raise prices at the same time, which suggests more of a pseudo-monopoly than a Perfect Competition. The end result is that you and I end up paying for oil as if it where in short supply, which is not true --- yet.
5. The worldwide depression is even affecting rich folks, although obviously not as critically as it hits the rest of us, Unfortunately, rich people tend to be the greediest, most selfish, sonsabeaches on the planet. Hence, they have no moral reservations about raising the prices of the goods and services their companies sell in an attempt to push profits back to pre-W levels. They are literally passing their minor financial problems onto the backs of the people least able to handle the load -- the poor and middle classes.
6. There is no free ride in this world. All those hundreds of billions of dollars that America sunk into wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia had to come from somewhere. Most of it was created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve. That hit the rest of us doubly hard. One, it caused inflation by lowering the value of USD, Two, it increased the interest that our government pays on all that pretend money -- interest which gets paid from your and my taxes.

What I hope I have made clear is that all this _MUST_ lead to the economic collapse of the American empire -- assuming we do not first commit hari-kiri by attacking Iran.