Peak Oil and the collapse of global finance are a “perfect storm” of converging phenomena that threaten to sink our age of prosperity through wealth destruction and propel us into a second Great Depression.

Stoneleigh, editor of the popular financial blog “The Automatic Earth“, describes in the podcast below how our current financial system is an unsustainable credit bubble grounded in “Ponzi dynamics,” or the logic of the pyramid scheme. She warns that most people are woefully unprepared to face the consequences of the devastating deflation that is now unfolding.

The talk was given during the recent Transition Network conference in the UK and starts with a good runthrough of the ‘peak energy’ situation, but quickly focusing in on finance, as she believes that this is the factor that will most dramatically shape our immediate future. It is quite long but worth persisting with. You can see the slides here as well as listen to the Q&A session.

PodCast: Making Sense of the Financial Crisis and Peak Oil (73M)