I agree conspiracy is probably too strong in general. I think you have two phenomena taking place first these people generally think alike or similar. One reason they are in the positions they are in. I've often found that CEO/Presidents/VP's could almost be clones of each other in my business area. Next the world at the top in any business area is not large its not a huge group of people and the all know and generally associate with each other. The web of personal contact leads to direct dialog on certain issues. This is not a conspiracy simply normal operation of the "good old boy network".

Give the above conditions conspiracy is possible and seen routinely on Wall Street with various trading scandals but its not needed. If you consider the mainstream stance a hidden conspiracy is not needed.

HOWEVER..
I'm increasingly convinced that the US Government at the highest levels is peak oil aware and has developed extensive plans to deal with peak oil. In some cases the seem to be going awry.

For example we don't see President Bush urging his buddies the Saudi's to produce more oil in fact the have been silent on the matter since 2006. Silence can speak louder than words. So at least for me their is no doubt in my mind that the highest echelons of the governments are very peak oil aware and not happy with what the know. The fact they have chosen to keep this information secret is disturbing. I think that the did not figure out WT ELM model and I suspect the current situation may be a surprise.

Hopefully once peak oil becomes obvious we will find out exactly what was known and when. Maybe if we get a change to Democrats we will see a witch hunt that will uncover some facts. But if we are right then you know that the CIA knows in even better detail the state of the worlds oil supply so this means Bush knows so either we are wrong or he is keeping the real situation secret for some reason probably just to allow the iron triangle to extract the last few bucks out of the masses. We seem to see every indication that the plan is to rev the economy till it explodes.