After reading this article, you will understand what keeps America alive, and what prevents global collapse. It is intrinsic and basic to our human nature.
What is keeping the Anglo-American system alive at the present moment is the "wall of money" phenomenon that LaRouche refers to in the article I linked to. Anyone who follows this thing can see that that's the case. The U.S. dollar has been held aloft through the issuance of more and more money. That's the second trajectory of the Triple Curve. But there are, though, definite limitations to monetary expansion, as the Weimar collaspe proves. Also, because other currencies and markets have been hammered the United States has been able to attract foriegn capital because of the seeming security of the American dollar. So, it is alot of smoke and mirrors involved in making America financially strong. Enron proved that.
Evidently, at this late stage of the game, the U.S. Central bank really has no other choice but to keep lowering their interest rates to zero as the last gasp effort to keep the dollar and the markets levitated. They don't have that much more wiggle room though. Any credit tightening at this critical point would probably instantly collapse the markets because of the tremendous leverage used to hold them up. Of course, Japan has had zero rates for sometime now and obviously it has only made their situation worse. So it is definitely going to get interesting.
By the way, my soldier picture is a German WWI soldier I think. It is just something that I picked up on the net thumbing through a WWI photo albumn. I no longer have the link though. / You Know