Going forward governments have a lot working against them. The people don't want big government anymore and governments are running out of energy to keep themselves going. To create growth, energy must be burned, we are a long way off self sufficient solar/electric means of propelling our civilization forward and most of the easy to get oil is already got. The oil that is left is harder to get and of lesser quality, more expensive to extract and process, this is a similar problem the Soviet Union faced in the 80's. Today as debt limitations put a halt on global growth and as a result the demand for oil falls, the price of oil falls and with it, the desire to extract it and profits of the oil producers. This all looks good as well as the looming debt crisis, everything points to a shrinking government which is what the people want, even when people don't realize it, when they are yearning for freedom the answer lies in less daddy government.