This submission was written for the Australian Senate Select Committee on Fuel and Energy
http://www.aph.gov.au/SENATE/committee/fuelenergy_ctte/index.htm
The case is made that the global peaking of crude oil production has happened 2005-2008. This triggered the financial crisis in a banking sector which had a pre-condition of accumulated debt. The recession which was to be expected after peak oil has now damaged the economy, making it harder to respond to the evolving oil & energy crisis
The root cause for the global financial crisis was and still is the untested assumption of perpetual economic growth, an almost religious belief that fueled investments to underpin such growth, the use of accumulating debt to finance it and the slowly dawning realization that such growth could not and cannot happen due to high oil prices and limited oil production.
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http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/fuelenergy_ctte/submissions/sub0103.pdf