From Alan Abelson’s weekly column in Barron’s

It increasingly looks “like the evermore freewheeling financial environment that we’ve taken for granted for the last 25 years is behind us.” Or, as the [Bank for International Settlements] declaims “has run its course.”

In sum, better buckle your seat belt; the ride ahead stacks up as pretty darn bumpy.

He sees a period of serious inflation followed by painful deflation, this being the hangover from years of a worldwide credit binge. It also probably spells the end of globalization as we know it, as it requires cheap, easily obtainable money to run on.

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What’s up with oil prices? Well, it’s not speculators, and there’s no relief in sight, meaning at least five more years of high prices with no easy fixes. The ugly truth? Peak oil isn’t fringe anymore—it’s going mainstream.

The dozens of comments to this Wall Street Journal blog post indicate that even in this bastion of capitalism and conservatism that peak oil is now accepted as fact.

Now is the time for this country to decide what to do about peak oil. Conservation is key. Europe uses far less oil per capita than does the US. We can learn from them. R&D into renewable energy, hybrid vehicles, and smart electrical grids needs to be done on a huge basis. This would also have the side effect of creating new industries and new jobs. Obama has said his administration will spend $30 billion a year on such projects. Good.

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But, how would he know? He’s already said he doesn’t use a computer and is net-illiterate.

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Why? Because plane flights elsewhere are cheaper but mostly because foreign tourists increasingly believe, with obvious good reason, that customs and security procedures are onerous and extremely unfriendly. So they are traveling elsewhere, this even when the dollar is low making prices here cheap for them.

Yet another legacy of eight years of erosion of civil liberties in the US by the neocons (as most of the supposed liberals in Congress did little to oppose.

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