It's very important for folks to educate themselves and would encourage everyone to look at the actual historical data regarding oil production and consumption. A new on-line tool -- the Energy Export Databrowser -- is available that makes it easy for users to plot historical production, consumption, import and export charts for all the major oil producing regions.

After looking at a few charts one begins to appreciate concepts like "Peak Production" (look at Norway, UK) and the "Export Land Model" (look at Indonesia, Malaysia) in a much more visceral way. It's true that a picture is worth a thousand words and this databrowser allows you to generates hundreds of different graphics covering oil, natural gas & coal and the money spent on them.

The databrowser uses data from the 2008 version of British Petroleum's Statistical Review, considered by many to be the energy industry's premier historical dataset.

So listen to Byron but also educate yourselves. A detailed understanding of the historical development of energy resources on a national and regional basis will empower you to make intelligent decisions about the likely direction of prices and availability going forward.

$140 truly seems the critical level for imminent failure. The present drop to only $125 means that there will still be a big upside on the next bounce. $150 this time is very plausible.

Prof Antal Fekete maintains that the only possible solution which could still be made to work is a return to the Gold Standard.

This is not going to happen, so I fear the US and World economic system will not recover. With Peak Oil, all the old financial solutions become meaningless. Even the Quick-fixes now being fluffed could not stave off the results of a declining finite oil supply.

Lets look at a best case scenario. I am a retired Baby-Boomer, Statistically I could live for another 20 years. The present oil mayhem, even if this is not PO, the graphs indicate that in my lifetime I am still going to see (4.5%)per year oil supply decline, which will be very ugly.

My children may yet curse my generation for creating hell on earth for them.

The part I find interesting is that all the High-testosterone bucks are still "investing" in future events, using the very mechanism which has clearly proven a failure since our grandparents started investing, 50 years ago in their future.

GM "was" America and soon will be no more. My father's shares are all but worthless.

Once Peak Population is reached the word "investing" will disappear, it will be like investing in houses in Central Europe just before the Plague hit. Buy one get three free.

As they say in the classics,"These are interesting times" and we may be the lucky ones who see it all unravel.

Graham