Whether it's Rome, Spain, France, Britain, or the Soviet Union, excessive debt has played a critical role in their decline.

The typical pattern in these examples of collapsing empires is:

Stage #1: Empires achieve success and become overconfident.

Stage #2: Overconfidence leads to extravagant spending on luxuries and wars.

Stage #3: Empires finance this lavish spending by going into debt.

Stage #4: The debt grows to an unsustainable level and creates a crushing burden.

Stage #5: Empires finance the debt through taxation and currency debasement.

Stage #6: The populace bears the brunt of debt repayment as empires raise taxes and debase the currency—to the maximum extent—until it causes internal instability.

Stage #7: Empires cannot finance their militaries because of their debt burden. This is usually the tipping point.

Stage #8: Underfunded militaries plus internal instability make empires vulnerable to foreign invasion, domestic revolution, civil war, and other existential dangers.

Stage #9: The empire collapses.

Now, it's the US Empire's turn.

The US federal government has the biggest debt in the history of the world. And it's continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace.

Annualized interest on the federal debt exceeded $1 trillion for the first time this year and is shooting higher at an exponential rate.

The federal debt's annualized interest cost is already higher than the defense budget.

It's on track to exceed Social Security and become the BIGGEST item in the federal budget.