Well... if i remember well (as i used to sleep in the history classes), not long ago (maybe less than 100 years ago), the gold was the standard to measure one countrys wealth, so as more gold it had stored, more wealthy it was.

Then the usa entered an economic crisis (i think it was the great depression), and its amount of gold (and consequently its wealth) decreased noticeably. So, what they did? They found a way to convince the world to adopt a new standard to measure the countries wealth: the dollar. So, a countrys wealth wasnt measured by how much gold it had anymore, but by how much green-painted paper (dollar) it had.

And... as the usa was the country which made this green-painted paper, of course it made a LOT of it, far more than its amount of gold, and so it became "wealthy" again, because now wealth was measured by how much green-painted paper one had, and now it had plenty of it.

Now the same thing is happening... this green-painted paper is losing its value, and so the usa is becoming poorer. How long it will take until they try to convince the world to adopt a new standard to measure wealth (and thus increase artificially its wealth again) ?

Im sure they will try to do this, and probably the new standard will be something electronic, like credit cards with chips, or just chips, or something like this... so, using the excuse of "promoting new technologies" they will put this new "electronic money" to use, while artificially creating a lot of it and thus getting wealthy again.

PS. I almost forgot... one good way to decrease the govt spending is to stop the drug war... but surely they prefer to let the countrys economy crash than let all the potheads smoke their weed in peace without being bothered (or arrested).