Fiscal Crisis and Imperial Collapses

Niall Ferguson (professor of financial and economic history at Harvard) gives the definitive explanation of the sovereign debt crisis from an historical perspective with a glimpse of what is coming.  The video of the presentation can be found here (sorry no embed). The actual presentation begins at about the eight minute mark for those who want to skip the introductions. I can not recommend this too strongly. The PowerPoint presentation can be seen here.