A grim but accurate assessment, I fear. However, the Owners and Consumers (I.e. the super-rich and the comfy middle class suburbanites who work for them and pay them for our 30-year mortgages) often forget that their money is just arithmetic, rooted ultimately in cheap net energy, cheap labor, and an intact global informational infrastructure and supply lines. When these fail, as they must. all their bank accounts will be worthless, as will the salaries they pay to the goons who protect them from the rage of the masses. Then they will be as poor as the rest of us, as their hungry servants turn against them. None of us will escape the catastrophe—unless we learn to grow gardens, grow community, and grow awareness. Those who collaborate to practice permaculture, teaching others, sharing our surplus with the destitute masses, and defending ourselves from both desperate marauders and corporate goons will have the best chance of surviving the collapse.