The trouble with trouble is that Americans can't afford it. They have spent all their money on granite countertops. When a rainy day comes, they have nothing saved up for it. The flood on the Mississippi delta, for example, was quickly followed by an emergency-spending package of more than $50 billion.

Whether the spending will help anyone or not, we don't know. But the loot has to end up in someone's pockets. We don't know where the money will end up either; but we know where it won't come from. It won't come from American savings because they barely exist.

In today's paper we find that another delta has gone under: Delta Airlines. The poor fliers carry $18 billion in debt. As oil prices rose, they had no reserves, no cushion, no savings in which to turn. Yesterday, the burden became too great; they went to court to ask the government to help get creditors off their backs.

What a way to run an airline!

But we cannot single out Delta for mockery. Three out of seven of America's top airlines are now bankrupt. A fourth, Northwest, is said to be considering it.

It makes us wonder. Rising fuel costs have been widely predicted, including here at The Daily Reckoning. We can understand that airline executives wish to cut costs, but The Daily Reckoning is free. What's more, higher energy prices were not only an obvious risk, but practically inevitable. Every single day, beginning with the first barrel of oil ever pumped in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the world's ultimate quantity of oil has gone down. Oil engineers also noticed that even though extraction technologies grew more sophisticated, they were not able to keep up with the pace of global consumption. By the 1970s, America's oil output was already in decline. Production for the entire world should go into decline this year or the next.

It is true, too, that alternative energy sources are being discovered and exploited. But there were no plans that we know of to retrofit Delta's fleet of jumbo jets to run on batteries or solar panels. They were designed to run on petroleum products - a lot of petroleum products. Our friend Byron King has estimated that a single regularly scheduled transatlantic passenger plane consumes more energy than was used up in the first 100 years of in the exploration and settlement of North and South America. (We can't recall his calculation, but it is something like that.) Which means that the airline industry must be particularly and obsessively sensitive to fuel prices.

Oil prices have gone up; but in real terms, oil is still not as expensive as it was during the oil shock of the 1970s. Since then, the planet used up more oil than it had in any three prior decades in history. Anyone could look back and see the heights to which oil could go. And anyone could guess about the effect of the last 30 years of usage: The real price of crude might well be higher than it was in the '70s, not lower.

Which makes us wonder: What did airline industry executives talk about when they got together? The weather? Golf? Kant's concept of the categorical imperative? How could they run a business so acutely sensitive to energy without making any provisions for higher prices? Did it never come up in conversation?

Delta executive number one: "Uh...what are we going to do if oil prices rise?"

Delta executive number two: "Don't worry about it. All airlines will be in the same fix. We'll all just have to raise our prices. And renegotiate our union contracts. "

Delta executive number three: "Are you kidding? As competitive as this business is? We'll all go out and borrow money so we can use the crisis to gain market share. If we raise prices we'll lose market share."

Delta executive number four: "But what good will it do to get more market share if we have to operate at a loss? Won't we be losing money on each sale and trying to make it up on volume?"

Delta executive number five: "Oh, stop worrying. We're the most dynamic industry in the world's most dynamic and flexible economy. We'll think of something."

Bill Bonner, back in London:

*** Delta Airlines was founded in 1924. It operated through several wars, a stock market crash, the Great Depression, countless industry bankruptcies, inflation, deflation, recession, boom, and bubble. And yet, there it sat, like the other delta at the mouth of the Mississippi, blankly waiting for a storm that anyone could see coming just by looking out the window. When trouble came, neither delta could afford it.

But that is the way the world works, dear reader. People do not make logical, rational and sensible choices. They get caught up in things that have a logic of their own. All over America there are millions and millions of Delta households, Delta businesses, and Delta governments - state, local and federal. All add debt and increase expenses - knowing full well that interest rates could rise, incomes could fall, house prices could drop, and lenders could balk at extending further credit. Any or all of those things are as obvious, imminent and inevitable as an increase in oil prices. When they come, Deltas will go underwater.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.