But it doesn't phase you.

Your 500bln number was floated a week or two:
here

I agree oil prices were inflated by speculation- its a point I've made to you in the past ... see this thread, where I tired of your claims that we invaded Iraq in a move to control the price of oil- A long running discussion in which I pointed out again and again that speculation was the root of the oil price shock, not supply. The problem is, SDAI, is you just make shit up as you go along, and as soon as I correct you or show you contradicting yourself, you just make something else up.

Anyway, what you can't get to from there is how 8 months of inflated oil prices destroyed our economy. We've had and survived oil shocks before.

Your whole claim makes no sense. There was no 'loss' of 500billion a year for 20 years. During the quarters in which oil was artificially high our economy actually grew!. The Oil shock is not the cause of the financial distress. The credit market, the CDS market, the derivative market, and most especially the pop of the realestate bubble. These things are the root causes. This is a financial market seizure, not an oil-driven economic slowdown.