Niall Ferguson: Empires on the Edge of Chaos

``Throughout history the rise and fall of empires isn't slow or cyclical, as we like to think, but arrhythmic...it mostly happens very, very suddenly. America is a superpower on the edge of chaos, according to economic historian and author Niall Ferguson. U.S. debt levels, he says, and its unwillingness to address the problem, has put it in the same category as other great empires which have collapsed throughout the ages.''

Many good points and comments, Ferguson is always worth a listen. Of course, He reveals himself to be a pathological deflationist at the end (and a few points throughout). He must not run into too many real folks who are paying nothing but inexorably higher costs!