The G20 summit in London has concluded, with President Obama proclaiming the heads of industrial countries agreed on “unprecedented steps to restore growth and prevent a crisis like this from happening again.”

But a closer look reveals not all that much has really changed. The Group of 20 policy makers agreed on stricter limits on hedge funds, executive pay, credit-rating firms and risk-taking by banks. They tripled the firepower of the International Monetary Fund and offered cash to revive trade to help governments weather the turmoil resulting from the surge in unemployment. They avoided the divisive question of whether to deliver more fiscal stimulus to their own economies.

They did nothing to address the underlying causes of the global economic and financial crisis – the plateauing of oil supplies and the economic growth that is dependent on cheap and abundant energy, and a global financial system based on the dollar as the reserve currency which relies on exponential growth to service exponentially rising debt.

At the meeting, there were hints that all is not well. China and Russia are calling for a new super-currency to replace the dollar.

Luis de Souza at The Oil Drum: Europe has a terrific primer on how the dollar evolved to become the world’s reserve currency since the end of WWII. After the dollar’s link to gold was abandoned, the Petro-dollar system arose. In exchange for military protection (maintaining the ruling elites), Middle Eastern oil producers provided easy oil that fostered economic growth that in turn reinforced U.S. military power. Oil producing countries stored their wealth in US Treasury bonds and other debt instruments becoming creditors of the military power that kept them safe; the flow of cheap oil allowed the economic growth that justified the faith in the US currency. But if growth falters, the debt that underlies the system can never be repaid. Efforts to stimulate demand and kick-start growth threaten the value of US dollar reserves held abroad, and again undermining faith in the dollar. Catch-22.

Euan Mearns at The Oil Drum: Europe has posted a couple of great graphs that show how U.S. energy consumption is related to U.S. debt:

Mearns points out the U.S. energy deficit has not been paid for by exporting manufactured goods, which would have been one way of returning energy to the rest of the world, but has instead been paid for by running up a “paper deficit” that has now reached such a size that it lies at the heart of global economic imbalance.

Mearns cautions:

The US energy debt to the world has now reached a staggering 88,000,000,000 barrels oil equivalent. It seems highly unlikely that this debt can ever be repaid in kind.

No matter how much “stimulus” we throw at the problem, the days of the U.S. free lunch are over.