Sun Could Set Suddenly If Debt Bites

This 2010 article by Niall Ferguson in The Australian remains as thought-provoking today as then, if not more so. An excerpt:

We naturally tend to assume that in our own time, too, history will move cyclically, and slowly.

Yet what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arhythmic, at times almost stationary, but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?