Hey Mr. Economist, the war is over!

Remember those Japanese soldiers who were left behind to fight on little islands in the Pacific after World War 2 ended?

This is a picture of Lt. Onoda who was one of them and remained convinced for 29 years after the war ended that the world he used to know still existed. You can check out this fascinating true story about the Lt.

Just imagine meeting Lt. Onoda and trying to explain to him that things have changed a little and now in fact, men have "walked on the moon."

Ha, ha, ha, ha! You can almost here Lt. Onoda laughing. "No way! Men walking on the moon! Nonsense," he would say.

Funny thing is, this is pretty much the attitude I observe with Wall-Streeters, Bankers, CEOs, Biz School Grads, Government Officials and just about everybody else, including all those "educated" types that went to "Haaa-vaaad" and Yale and LSE or whatever.

Guess what guys? The joke is on you. The war ended a long time ago. Didn't you get that memo? Didn't you notice all the leaflets dropping from the sky?

It's incredibly strange that all these otherwise intelligent people have continued to ignore the signs. You know, little things like the fact that US oil production peaked way back in January 1971.

Hey! Guess what?

1971 was 29 years ago!

Just like Lt. Onoda hiding in the jungle for 29 years, these same masters of the universe have continued to "believe" in the myth of infinite cheap oil and GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH.

It almost sounds like some kind of cheer, doesn't it? Or scarier still, some kind of chant. Imagine a whole stadium full of economists chanting together, "GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH." Although I always enjoy it when they do "the wave." (otherwise known as the Wall Street Journal; nothing but entertainment) ;-)

Economic growth, as we know it in the late 20th century and early 21st, was completely dependent upon the exponential rise in the availability of cheap oil for transporation fuels and food production and everything else. End of story.

The Global Crisis is caused by the change in the vector of oil production. Simple.

But economists and the ModernMediaMachine remain convinced that the war is still on!

Maybe we should drop some leaflets down on them in the jungle and tell them the war is over and to come on out and get with the solutions to Peak Oil?

The Crisis is Energy, not the financial markets!

The idea that the Global Crisis is financial in origin is a catastrophic misunderstanding that is continuing to prevent the creation of a solution. Wall Street, global media and governments are filled with fools who mistakenly think that sub-prime paper was the origin of the problem.

These people have a fundamentally flawed view of reality.

They fail to understand that the growth of the industrial world over the last 100 years was only possible because of cheap energy from oil, not because of "brilliant" financial geniuses and "talented" leaders.

The U.S. property bubble and it's collapse was entirely due to forces driven by energy and the complete failure of governments to use energy from oil to build an energy-sustainable world before Peak Oil caused the current catastrophic crash in global energy markets that is forcing a Power-Down from the unsustainable days of essentially free energy from oil.

The longer the world stumbles along thinking that the problem is with financial markets, the deeper the energy crisis will become and the harder it will be to start to rebuild fundamental infrastructure that could eventually bring back the possibility of new growth.

The world will have to learn how to adapt to the new paradigm of NO GROWTH because global oil production will no longer support it.

Massive debt taken on by the U.S. and other nations during the current crisis will likely cause the collapse of many nations, including perhaps the U.S., unless the economists start to understand that the economy is supported by energy, not the other way around.

This is hard for most people to grasp. For a simple reason.

Everybody alive today has been taught the wrong lesson. We have all been taught, every day of our lives, that energy was "free," meaning that rock oil was so cheap that it was basically free.

That was never true and now we are getting bit by our failure to understand the fundamental nature of natural resources like oil and the necessity of the peaking, depletion and lowered EROEI or net energy on the downside of the curve of production.

If this view of the economy doesn't quite make sense to you, I suggest you watch some of Chris Martenson's videos to learn about the connection between energy and the economy.