BTW- I disagree with you that leases are great. Auto leases are not great, auto leases are the true begining of the downward spiral of consumer behavior that got us to this point.

If you can't affort to finance a new car, but a used one. PERIOD.

SECOND: I think the lenders are to blame for SOME of this mess. When you look at a persons finances and see they may qualify for one thing, you as person must be honest and tell them they CANT pay for it. I qualified for a $600,000 house. NO WAY could I have paid for it. I understood that, the problem today in all seriousness is HONESTY! People cant deal with honesty, they call it racism, personal attacks, intimidation, or whatever words works for their situation If people could be honest with themselves most of this mess would be over. HENCE GAS AND OIL, we have to be honest that while the differing Eutopias we discuss sound great, but in the grand scheme of things are not feasible. We need to continue our oil exploration, natural gas exploration, Nuclear, wind, and solar endeavors. Once we ALL BECOME HONEST and admit this must happen our country will be much better off.

Here goes. One of the reason I rest blame firmly on the shoulders of the American people is that we have really spent the last 15 years pretending to be rich. Do you see the number of Lexus, Mecedes and BMW out there? When I was young, only ACTUAL rich people drove cars like Beemers and Benz(lexus wasn't around yet.)

The market provided us with what we wanted- can't afford to by a Luxury car? Fine, we can lease you one. Can't afford a Mansion, find we will build you a 3000 sq ft house, mass produced out of flakeboard and put in in a development with 1000 others. You can finacnce it with a 50 year mortgage.

In order to pretend they are something they are not, people truly have been renting EVERYTHING for 15 years. No one owns anything, or has any interest in doing so.

We need to get back to the point where only the rich look rich. If you make $60k a year, YOU ARE NOT RICH! You should not have a mercedes, you should not live in a Mansion. I don't care how much you want one or how much you think you deserve it.

Middle class people(and they are not vanishing, they just now predend to not be middle class,) need to return to middle class values. All the junk loans and high energy costs won't effect you thqat much at all if you live right.

I realize I am living proof. We are comfortable. My wife has a good job, and I have a good part time gig and stay home with the kids. We bought a $160K house at a time when our house hold income was $175k. I could have bought a 300,000 dollar house, but thought that to be idiotic. Our debt is managable, and if we can't afford something, we don't buy it. So long as we don't lose our jobs because of the rescesion caused by irresponsible middle class wanna be rich idiots, we will be fine. That is simply because we did everything right while hoards of fools were doing everthing wrong.

If I sound sumg Dax, its cause I am, and I think I deserve to be.

DAX: You hit the nail on the head. We need to get away from our current fiat economy and get back to an economy based tangible measurable goods and services. This will equate to more substantiated numbers, not so easily inflated or skewed to make things look better than they are. I also think the bigest way to help our economy is with a TAX BREAK! What I mean is cut a lot of the fat and dead-weight from the government. Our government Fed, state, local are WAY TOO BIG and have their hands in our pockets too much! I just read Obama wants to create 600,000 new government jobs! Is he nuts? All that will do is either A) create a larger deficit due to more spending OR B) hurt the economy more because there WILL HAVE to be more tax increases!

ROBO: I guess I will be looked down on as I drive a Toyota Sequoia. Being 6'4" a wife of 6' with 2 kids size is something I will forever be interested in. What I like is the gas mileage of this big truck is 19 miles per gallon highway! I have a trailblazer my wife drives to work and gets 13 highway!! Go figure.

I think the gluttony will come to an end soon. I am building on to my house not for status ( I like small less to clean and maintain) but for size. Growing family needs more room. I also still think we need to continue to address the energy crisis. Since gas went down so to did the outcry over prices. Now is the time to strike while the iron is hot. Protect our future and crush the terrorist countries who control the oil therefore our future as well. We have the know how, we are just a short sighted country when it comes to problems. We want immediate fix and worry about the problem later when it gets bad again! I guess that goes back to the TV generation. We are used to sustained effort in about 15-20 minute bursts!!

I actually consider myself to be an optimist as well. But then again, optimism is relative. Depending on where you placed your bets and priorities, things could end very badly.... such as, for the soccer moms you mention, who see their McMansions and and Suburbans as god-given status symbols.

It's also going to be especially hard for the Baby Boomers, who are going to start wanting to retire en mass over the next decade.

Of course it's going to hit the economy hard, but I say this is a good thing. Our economy was based on negative, false values; putting profit before people, encouraging inequality, requiring that there always be a level of poverty, not just in the global economy but in our own country. Living in our debt-based fantasy world for so long has finally caught up with us, and now we're seeing the industries that supported and promoted excess collapsing under their own hubris.... and I say good riddance to them.

How easily we make this transition is yet to be seen. There are an awful lot of people who have benefited so much from the old ways that they will do anything in their power to keep the zombified systems on life-support as much as possible, filtering as much money up the pyramid as possible.

So now we have Obama ready to enact a stimulus package costing the better part of a trillion dollars, which will most likely be spent rebuilding highways. My question is, how exactly is this going to help when people aren't buying cars anymore, nor will we have access to the energy required to power those cars? Maybe it would be a better idea to invest that money in rebuilding public transportation, light rail lines, re-opening waterways, etc.

How about subsidizing local agriculture, putting more people back to work on the land so communities can feed themselves instead of relying on and giving all the subsidies to industrial agribusiness?

Smaller, more localized levels of complexity. Less dependence on hierarchy. An economy based on tangible services and goods. This is, I hope, where our future lies. It may take a while to get there, and there's going to be a lot of people kicking and screaming along the way.

But I've always thought that we're going to get through it, and for people who are willing to see things in a new light, it's going to be VERY positive!

PS- take the time to watch that Crash Course I liked to earlier. It's mind boggling, and quite informative.

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

----- "For my part, I know nothing with any certainty...but the sight of the stars makes me dream." -Van Gogh

Happy New Year.

I think to some extent my view is a little more optimistic, although cautiously. I think the next year or two are going to be hard, and that hard time will produce some people that think differently than we did.

I think the last of the yuppies will finally be killed off(thankfully) and people will start living more reasonably. Yes, this will have a negative impact on the Econ. but in the long run it could stabilize things.

I am pretty sure that it will be a while before we allow idiotic soccer moms to buy Suburbans and Navigators en masse and drive up demand. It will also be a slow return to demand levels.

I think within the next few years ( longer to make it to the provences like Central Pensyltucky) Suburbans, Navigators and Hummers will be looked down upon the same way fur is. A showy expression of excess that is reserved for old people who don't know any better.

At least one can hope. STAY POSITIVE GUYS! Its the only chance we've got.

-First, those who have been warning us about the arrival of peak oil predicted that during the years immediately surrounding the peak would be met with extreme volatility that would seem to defy any form of market logic, which is exactly what is happening now.

-There has been a 6% drop in US demand for oil. It seems that this is a large part of the rapid drop in the price of oil per barrel, and the resulting drop in fuel prices. However, the situation is far more nuanced than just traditional supply and demand economic models. Remember, we're dealing with an economic system in which exponential growth is not only factored in, but the primary requirement.

-The collapse in the oil market has once again made it economically nonviable to invest in any kind of expansion projects, be it further drilling/exploration or alternative fuels.

It's enough to make your brain bleed. Yet the proponents of the status quo still seem to think and promote the idea that spending our way out of this situation is best. I just read an article in the WSJ that pretty much claimed that people's rapid reduction in spending is to blame for the economic mess, which sounds to me about as absurd as the rapist blaming the rape victim for his actions.

http://tinyurl.com/6uhbsk

----- "For my part, I know nothing with any certainty...but the sight of the stars makes me dream." -Van Gogh

I've already stated numerous times how I am perceiving this whole debacle... this tragic comedy. I've provided links to intelligent and pragmatic sources of discussion and insight. They've been poo-pooed by some and considered by others, which I'm happy that at least a few people out there in the square community are willing to hear me out.

The collapse of the oil industry (and all the other industries that will systemically collapse as a result) and the fact that the sheer corruption and incompetence of the Wall St moguls have become so glaringly transparent is only further evidence that a grand change is right around the corner, whether we want to accept it or not.

Obama isn't going to save us, no matter how noble his intentions may be. (The verdict is not yet out on this one.) The Treasury and the Federal Reserve CERTAINLY aren't going to save us. Flooding the system with more money will only cook up the same effect as flooding the bloodstream of a diabetic with pure sucrose.

The only way we will get through this is to look inward and change our own habits and priorities. For one, don't work harder than you absolutely have to. Instead, put that energy into learning how to grow your own food, getting into shape, supporting your local community (and no that does not mean shopping at the local WalMart), getting to know your neighbors, figure out how to entertain yourself without the use of television- whatever it is that you have in your power to do- DO. It's time to reclaim our minds and to stop being unwitting agents of the Control System.

In one way, we're off to a good start. Despite the media telling us how horrible it is that we're driving less and buying less, these are good things in the long run. Yes, it's going to hurt a bit at first, but that is an inevitable result of turning a blind eye to these problems for so long. For every job lost, a myriad of new opportunities will arise, if we only have eyes to see them.

Here is something I came across a little while ago. This guy has compiled quite a bit of research and connected all the dots of these issues and presented it in a very pragmatic, easy-to-understand, non-alarmist manner. Took me about a week to get through, but I highly recommend it.

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

The time has come to put our shoulders to the wheel, folks.

----- "For my part, I know nothing with any certainty...but the sight of the stars makes me dream." -Van Gogh