It didn't happen all at once. Nothing ever does.
For decades, the financial establishment acted as if the rules didn't apply to them... as if debt didn't matter, as if printing money was a magic trick, as if the promises made to retirees and creditors could be delayed, inflated, or restructured forever.
The world's biggest debtor nation kept borrowing, spending, and lying to itself... and the world kept playing along.
Today, I need to show you - that era is over.
As one of the world's most respected bond investors, Jeffrey Gundlach, recently put it: "A [debt] reckoning is coming."
What we're about to live through won't be just another crisis, not just another bubble popping. It's the inevitable, slow-motion end of the entire post-1971 monetary order.
The one that began when President Richard Nixon defaulted on the Bretton Woods agreement. The one that paid for every lie since.
If you've ever wondered how great powers fall, just stay tuned. This is it. The most brutal reality show the world has ever seen.
And the real tragedy is... we were warned.
Back in 2010, I said it plainly: when the Federal Reserve began printing money to buy mortgage debt and Treasury bonds - without any authorization from Congress - we had crossed a line.
That act, and every one that followed it, was a tax levied not through law but under the guise of financial crisis.
Over the years, I've documented each step in this long unwinding - the degradation of our institutions, the cultural decay, the rise in crime, drug abuse, gambling, prostitution, personal debt, and depression.
These are not disconnected social trends. They are symptoms of the same disease: a debauched currency that rewards speculation over work, dependency over self-reliance, corruption over character.
America's total debt (public and private) has exploded to over 400% of GDP. Interest payments now exceed $1 trillion annually and are rising fast. Social Security and Medicare shortfalls are unfixable.
Productivity is stagnating. Birth rates are falling. The age of first homeownership is now middle-age. Government spending has become a permanent parasite on every productive effort.
And now comes the reckoning.
In just the last 20 years, the federal debt per person has nearly tripled. If current trends continue, it will reach $150,000 per person by the end of Trump's second term.
And it will not be paid back. It can't be. The numbers don't work.
You may think the government can "fix" this. Think again. They won't. They can't. Because the problem is the government.
And as always, the solution will be the same: inflate away the debt. Devalue the dollar. Break their promises. Punish savers. Reward debtors. Rewrite the rules.
Plato once warned of a ship in crisis, a ship of fools - where the sailors mutiny, cast aside the true navigator, and fight each other for control... while the vessel drifts toward disaster.
That's what we're living through.

America's financial ship has no captain. The Federal Reserve and Trump clash in public, not to solve the problem, but to obscure it...
To convince the public that credit is good. That deficits don't matter. That the only cure for their debt addiction is more borrowing, more printing, and more taxes on the very people already sinking.
And now they're steering straight into the storm.
This is how empires and currency systems die. Slowly at first. Then all at once.
We've had 50 years of reckless spending - one straw at a time added to the camel's back. President after president piling trillions of dollars onto the debt, one after another.

And in our gut, we all knew there would be a last straw.
Well, I believe we've just seen it. The long-feared breaking point.
We're about to see what "all at once" really looks like. Think Argentina, Greece, and Vietnam rolled into one.
That's why I've just released a critical new broadcast, to help you move ahead of what I believe is America's inevitable default... an event that might have seemed years away, but has now been accelerated by Donald Trump and his broken promise to radically cut spending.
I believe it's no longer a question of if America will default - or even when.
It's just a question of how soon.
And if you are not actively preparing to protect your money from this historic collapse... then you are putting everything you've worked for at risk.
Your savings. Your investments. Your retirement.
Please don't take that risk.
I can show you exactly what I've been advising my readers to do - the investments I believe could actually benefit from the destruction of the dollar... as capital escapes into the only assets anyone will want to own when this comes crashing down.
In my broadcast, I name three assets to own right now - including my #1 high conviction stock. Plus I walk you through a number of other investments that could see years of growth, even as this unstoppable debt collapse unfolds.
But understand: you're against the clock. This situation could escalate faster than almost anyone will comprehend.
Everything you need to know is right here.

Good investing,
Porter Stansberry