Are we at risk of economic collapse with this level of debt?

The collapse is here, but we've been here before.

It's the year 2024. Nearly two decades have passed since that prophetic warning was issued in 2007, and while the players have changed, the stage remains essentially the same. The difference this time? We're in the finale, a moment the previous generation could only glimpse. What was once an ominous warning of impending collapse, a "Ponzi scheme" on the verge of collapse, has now morphed into the spectacle of systemic failure. The framework of our global financial architecture is finally groaning under the weight of its contradictions, no longer able to conceal its fragility. Yet few seem to see it coming again.

Today's global economy is a grotesque parody of the warnings of 2007. The excesses of that era have, if anything, been magnified many times over. For years, politicians and economists pretended they could manage a crisis they had, in reality, only delayed. The "bullish" forecasts that were once the domain of the experts of 2006 are now even more enthusiastic, even more certain, even more indifferent to the realities slowly closing in around them. The dogma of perpetual growth, once accompanied by a certain skepticism, has now become gospel in boardrooms and government offices.

The data still paints a rosy picture—at least on the surface. At the time of this writing, the S&P 500 is flirting with record highs, the unemployment rate is at historic lows, and the mainstream financial media is hailing a "soft landing" after the inflation surge of 2022-2023. But the truth is, the floor has already given way beneath us. Most people just don't feel it yet. And by the time they do, it will be too late.

The spirit of debt and cheap money

The pandemic was supposed to be the great reset—a moment when global leaders would address structural inequalities, implement sustainable policies, and begin reversing environmental degradation. Instead, they continued playing the same game that brought us to the brink. We learned nothing. We printed trillions of dollars and threw them at consumers, businesses, and governments alike, assuming that this time there would surely be no reckoning. Debt, already astronomical in 2007, now exceeds any previously imagined levels. By 2024, private debt in the US alone is close to $20 trillion, while global government debt will have surpassed $100 trillion. The irony? No one is really talking about it. It's simply too big to understand, too pervasive to question.

The result of this endless debt-making is inflation—no longer the gentle, moderate inflation of the early 2020s, but something more insidious, a silent theft of the future in broad daylight. For years, central banks fought desperately to contain inflation after the post-pandemic surge by raising interest rates ever higher until they became unsustainable. Now they have backed themselves into a corner: higher interest rates stimulate growth, lower ones fuel inflation. The illusion of control is gone, and now it's only a matter of when—not if—the system will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

If history gives us a clue, we already know the answer.