I wonder if US neocons saw how Japan was getting by and concluded that control, not ownership, of resources was the vital ingredient. Rather than regime change on other countries the Japanese did it by means of minority shareholdings, long term contracts, soft loans and vertical integration of production and processing. But what happens when those resources that cannot be piped or transmitted need difficult physical shipment?

I also wonder if the media has a 'collapse filter'. The rule seems to be don't show closeups of ageing celebrities and don't interview stockbrokers who may never work again.

I don't know much about Russia and its collapse - I was only a tangential witness. However, almost every time I bring up TOD, I can see a Russian beauty at the top left of the screen with a link to www.russianeuro.com

I find that very positive. It seems that collapse has a good side to it after all. :=)

As John Michael Greer points out in a recent interview, the significant thing about Diamond's example cultures - the Greenland Norse, the Easter Islanders, and so on - is that they were all very small (less than 50,000 people) and very isolated cultures. So their collapses when they came were fairly rapid, over a few years - and correspondingly violent and unpleasant.

Would larger cultures be different? Surely - they have more resilience, more connections with other cultures to help them out. The historical examples of larger cultures of tens or hundreds of millions of people - the various Chinese empires, the Roman Empire, the Mayans and so on - took a century or more. Rather than everything falling apart over a year or two, it was 20-30 years of troubles and collapse, followed by another 20-30 years of stability and partial recovery, and so on.

What that means is that even if the US chooses to fail, it won't be overnight - and after today's failures, tomorrow may bring partial recovery.

I concur clifman. Dollars, euros, rubles, pesos or coconut shells, all the same thing thing. What they represent is an an entitlement to "spend" energy. Now whether we choose to invest that energy into something that will reap more energy - like growing food or we piss it away on pleasure cruising in hotted up cars, is the essential crux of free market economics.

its why the $700 Bn to bail out the banks is just nonsense. All it is going to do is move numbers around from one balance sheeet to another. It won't do anything to unwind the massive consumer binge in the US (and other western countries) which is just an energy black hole. There isn't really $700 billion in anyones bank account,it is just going to be written into existence, but it won't produce any more energy in the economy which is waht is really needed. Injecting that energy into the economy is going to be the real challenge for the next administration. No amount of funny money is going to make that happen. It will take radical measures and a New(er) Deal to make that happen.

I have been reading in the last few days"Since Yesterday" by Frederick Lewis Allen, which is about the Great Depression and it is striking how President Hoover simply couldn't get the economy working again. It took 3 years of very hard times to prepare the American people for the New Deal that FDR brought with him.

We haven't even gone through the Panic stage yet, but we are getting closer. I fear that whoever the next president is going to end up being a Hoover like figure, putting out fires for the next four years after which the American people may be ready for a serious strongman to come in and push them around.