All fall down

Though this article ia a couple of days old, it's still worth a read. Actually the author's book 'World made by Hand' http://www.worldmadebyhand.com/ may picture what we are heading for.
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James Howard Kunstler
Author of The Long Emergency
Oct 7, 2008
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Some big questions for the week: will the Euro survive as a currency? Will the rush into the US dollar continue even as the US financial system dematerializes in a Fibonacci fever of accelerating de-leveraged infinitude? Will the remaining Big Boyz, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan succumb to the counter-party hemorrhagic fever? Will great rows of lesser banking dominoes now start clacking onto their faces? Will all fifty states follow the leads of California and Massachusetts and line up at the US Treasury's hand-out window. Will the entity that calls itself the civilized world be left at week's end with anything resembling money?

Your guess is as good as mine. We've entered the realm of phase change, where everything is slipping and nothing has settled. The final result, when the dust settles -- and that may not be for weeks to come -- will certainly be a poorer western world. Will it be so poor that it can no longer afford to import anything? Including oil from the land of the date palm? If so, we are really in for a rough ride, poised as we are at the edge of the heating season here in the temperate regions. Notice, by the way, that the $700 billion just approved by congress to bail out Wall Street is exactly the same sum of money that we send to the oil exporting nations this year.

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http://www.321gold.com/editorials/kunstler/kunstler100708.html