Whenever peasants like us get into the market in a big way it always end with a giant money suck into some hole in the ground. I agree with you that it's a pump n dump operation thats gotten us into this mess, and that it should have been obvious... And now hard times for all but the beneficiaries of all that pumping and dumping! Kunstler calls it I think, with his take on exurbia, with its military-scale supply lines so endemic to its survival . So doomed without some major new alternate fuel. And the megalopolises aren't in much better shape.