The interesting thing about people who study politics, especially the academics I have met, is that they seem to think that ideas, rather than energy are the principal determinants of how people live. The future is one of energy decline causing "de-development" rather than raising "developing" nations up to a western level. How will we do the decline? Maybe political ideas can help there - but only if they acknowledge the reality of finite resources.

Chris,

Yes, "Australia’s household debt to income ratio increased from 70 per cent in 1996 to 160 per cent by December 2007". This unnecessary house price inflation was produced primarily by government regulation as a result of their political tinkering with supply and demand and the unnecessary bringing forward of all infrastructure charges on new construction. This does not deliver any competition policy performance savings, only feather-beds bad regulation and delivers unsustainable government planning with these inflated negative results. Competition policy was suppose to deliver better public service cost performance,But then the public service is a business and now compete unfairly with the private sector as operator and regulator which highlights their conflict and vested interests.

It is not generally realised, and certainly the media has not picked
it up, but the reason for the current financial crisis was unexpected.
The loans that were granted to people who should never have received
them had a interest rate increase in the agreement for two years after
the start.
It was expected that a number of the borrowers would default.

That was calculated and understood. What wasn't taken into account was
the sharp rise in oil prices, the increase in petrol prices and to make
it worse the resulting effect on food prices and the rise on top of
that caused by the food for ethanol price increase.
As most Americans drive to work these three increases all on top
of each other was just too much. The number of defaulters was many
times what was expected with the interest rate increase.

The whole thing was made even worse because the insurance taken out
on these loans crashed the companies holding the insurance, it just
was not in their calculations and the loans are so packaged up that
they can't work out who owes who what.

Unfortunately with the price of oil getting set to rise again sometime
next year growth has probably finished maybe for good and
the current problems may well be permanent.
With energy plateauing can growth do anything else ?
As energy depletes growth must deplete with it.