And the main fact is that too many people want that most incredible of all natural resources--oil.  The bankers have been taught by the mega-fool academic economists that if the price of oil increases, there will magically appear more oil.  Listening to such fools is like being caught in an airport by a freaking Moonie, but such is the nature of an education in economics these days.

You might want to explain, convincingly, the actual connection between oil and the financial system, without it sounding like a Drumbeat post on The Oil Drum. I for one do not think the current economic disaster has much to do with oil at all. So economists think the production of oil is responsive to demand? At the limit, of course, this is absurd (the old joke about parachutes), but before then ...

But of course, I defer to our resident economists.