There is an underlying shift happening right now that is being overshadowed by the election.

Although the proximate cause of the credit crisis may be a combination of extended low interest rates, unscrupulous mortgage lending, corrupt bond rating and the lack of oversight and opacity in derivative markets, there is also a shift in fundamental valuations that made the crisis inevitable.

It began when the evidence that energy demand had become greater than supply undermined the assumption that real estate values would always rise. Our housing and land use ethos have enabled a giant pyramid scheme for over 200 years. As long as there were more fields and woodlands that could be turned into farms and ranches then suburbs and towns then development always meant that our collective wealth was always rising. Cheap energy only fueled that spiral into environmental degradation.

So with the end of cheap energy this economic crisis can be seen as a basic revaluation of the world's assets around the nexus between land values and energy supply.

Our entire cultured has been premised on an unending supply of cheap energy. We don't have a choice anymore, we drove that culture off an economic and environmental cliff and we are falling into a new reality of expensive energy, we couldn't go back if we wanted to.

That shift changes all of the operating assumptions involving land use, land values, government regulation and taxation, agricultural priorities and technologies and therefor diet and health care, global trade and the efficiencies of supply chains, manufacturing, transportation, everything. That means the way we live everyday and the way we work and play and eat and the way we support our families.

Today doesn't seem all that different then yesterday. But next October is going to be a whole lot different then today. We may not always be conscious of this but most of us know that in some fundamental way the way we live has changed. And to some of us, this is just coming home.