It may be politics all the way down, but it's economics all the way up. Sort of like the relationship between the gut and the head.

That said, I suspect the biggest event is going to be a monetary meltdown.

Consider that money functions as a social contract and accounting device, enabling the markets to function. Basically a way to balance the ledgers.

But since we are linear, goal oriented creatures, we see money as a commodity to mine and store.

Which means that ever more has to be added, to keep the system running, as well as ever more metastatic methods of storing what has been extracted.

The one thing the flunkies allowed in public office will always do, is run up the public debt. That's because the banks need it to function. Stocks might get the attention, but the real money is in bonds. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth. The asset side of the ledger requires a debt on the other side.

Not to mention the derivatives market, which is like an inverted pyramid, of notational value, built around the actual economy.

Basically what you have is a nuclear bomb, built into the framework of the economy.

The politicians are a bunch of pygmies running around, trying to distract attention from what's going on behind the curtain.

Look at the two biggest screwups of the last 20 years, the Afghan and Iraqi wars. We go in and blow up Iraq, then basically hand it off to Iran. Supposedly our most sworn enemy in the area. Then in Afghanistan, we screw around for 20 years and finally get run out by the goat herders. Pretty much a replay of Vietnam.

It should be obvious there was no strategic logic there, just a bunch of unmoderated testosterone, with no adults in the room. Why? Because their only real function is to create the debt the banks need. After that, they do as the please and since any actual adults would be a threat to the banks, the results are pretty juvenile.

Michael Hudson wrote a book some years ago, called "Forgive Them Their Debts." about how debt jubilees grew out of a need to keep the wealthy from using their power to destroy the rest of society, because then the neighbors come in, steal the cattle and rape the women.

Here we are, 3000 years later, stuck in the same rut.