Reading Edward Teller’s post on the trials and tribulations experienced by Shell Oil in its efforts to get at all that tasty delicious crude oil below the floor of the Arctic Ocean made me think of this fact: Unless you live in China, none of that oil is destined for your car’s gas tank.

Many current books on this crash describe in detail the manufactured financial instruments that contributed to the collapse of the high-interest bond market, the real estate market, and the stock market. Eric Janszen asks us to look deeper because our situation is still dire. Worthless assets bought by the U.S. for over a trillion dollars are worth a tiny fraction of that. European states continue to throw good dollars after bad rescuing banks, but we are still on a precipice. What to do?