Right now, the United States has responded to a lack of demand for its Treasuries through a questionable and disturbing method: we're buying our own debt.

That allows the yields to remain low, but buying our own debt is somewhat akin to creating your own credit card. Eventually, you have to acknowledge that the money you create on the books never really existed, unless the United States plans to simply print money to pay off all the bonds.

That would create a level of inflation not seen in the West since the Weimar Republic, and will effectively force the rest of the world to avoid U.S. currency and investments as unsound. It would, for the first time in decades, put the United States on the financial sideline.

Who would take over as the leading economic power?

What kind of world would global dominance by China, India, or Russia bring, assuming any of these could take that role?

How about a coalition of oil producers like OPEC, who have the means to fund it?

Scary.

The end of the American Empire. Not that scary, really. It happens.

The end of America as the founding fathers set it up to be is disappearing and that is scary.

The end of the American Empire as envisioned by neocons and power hungry war mongers is not scary at all.