Market Collapse and the Fall of Empire

I was having a cup of coffee last night at my favorite cafe in town and the waiter, a good friend of mine (I have been going to this same cafe for many years) said to me, "Wow! You told me in 2008 what was going to be happening today!" (with regards to the world economic situation and the recent market falls). I replied, "Yes, but watch out, this is only the beginning!"
This is true. What we are looking at here is a full on collapse of empire, such as has not been seen since the Fall of Rome. To get a picture, consider this...
If you were a Roman living on the fringes of the Empire in say, Lundunum (London) during the first century, life was fairly pleasant. The roads were good, and while the weather was generally rotten, your house was centrally heated and had inside toilets, bathtubs, nice gardens, elegant decor and hot and cold running water. You would have had at least one chariot to run around in and a cushy government job with a regular salarium (salary). Life was fairly peaceful and the local indigenous population were not too bothersome. Your technology was superior and you were just damn smarter than they were. Also, they relied on you for defense against the ravaging hordes of Saxon longboats. As long as the ships with their loads of salt, gold, silver and tin kept coming and going, all was well.
Britain at that time was not a Roman province, but a client state with good economic ties to the Empire.
However, all was not well with the Empire in far off Rome. The rot actually began with Julius Caesar, the first Dictator. This was the end of the Graeco-Roman democracy and the beginning of the Era of the Dictators. Caesar was of course only the first and by no means the worst. Augustus was OK, just a bit fixated on censuses. Tiberius wasn't too bad either, he actually showed a great deal of tolerance for new religious beliefs like Christianity, although he had a lot of them locked up and executed, too (including the judgement against Christ Himself, through his minion Pontius Pilate, although it is probable or even likely that Tiberius knew nothing of these events until after the fact). It was Caligula who had the dangerous combination of an inferiority complex, insanity and a lot of power, a bigoted view of the world and a lust for blood. After him came Claudius, a ruthless tyrant, and after him, Nero. Nero was a mummy's boy, actually. He became Caesar during his adolescence and was a bright ray of hope. He, unlike his two predecessors, had a brain or two in his head and was a gifted speaker. However, he was also a puppet. The real power of Rome was held not by him, but by his mother whom he loved dearly and feared equally so. He built a palace for his horse but to his own people and to the people of his empire he was ruthless in his bloodlust. The dungeons were full of prisoners, including Romans, who had displeased the emperor and were now destined for a gory and often public death. He was weak but was dangerous in his weakness. After the assassination of his mother, his mind fractured and it was ultimately he who"fiddled while Rome burned".
By the time Nero committed suicide in AD 68, Rome had descended into a state of civil war. Vespian ruled for ten years after him, then Titus, but the glory of Rome was forever gone.
But what was life like in Britain during this era of Mad Emperors?
Caligula invaded Britain, a friendly client state, in AD 40 but the invasion was farciacal with his troops collecting sea shells as tribute. The local indigenous Brits were not amused, however.
If you were that Roman in Lundunum, life would have been uncomfortable and possibly even dangerous for a while, but life went on-for a time. In fact, Roman power was seemingly strengthened, even as Rome itself was rotting at the core. Claudius invaded in AD 43 and the invasions and wars went on for some time, decades, actually, under subsequent emperors. Roman power was eventually consolidated in the south of Britain and "Pax Romana" would continue in Britain for about another 150-200 years, but eventually the Empire utterly collapsed and around the turn of the 5th century, the British Romans were instructed by Caesar Honorius to "defend their own selves". At this time, Rome was so short of money it did could not pay for its own legionaries to return to Rome! By the time the 6th Century arrived, commerce had collapsed, coinage had stopped circulating, towns were evacuated and the few Romans still in Britain were living (or hiding) in abandoned hill forts. The Saxons filled the power vacuum left by the Romans and they were even more barbarous than their predecessors. Lundunum was utterly desolated and was not rebuilt as a city until the 8th century.
So what does the collapse of "The New Rome" bode for us as a client state, Geraldton being the analog to ancient Lundunum? For a time, life may be uncomfortable, but liveable. I would say that is where we are now. Geraldton, like Lundunum of old, is a significant international trade port, but not the Capital. In Roman Britain, this role was filled by Colchester and in our case, it is Perth.
Eventually, the fiat money of Ancient Rome went Banca Rupta and for a time there was a return to a gold and silver standard. There was, however, not enough gold and silver out there to support this system, even if the State engaged in wars to loot and pillage the resources of their "clients". It all just didn't pay off. Constant wars destroyed the treasuries of Rome and upset locals from the far flung reaches of empire destroyed what economic collapse didn't. Throw in a few massive natural and man made disasters (eruption of Vesuvius, The Great Fire of Rome, Eruption of Taupo in the 5th Century) and you have the Collapse of an Empire. I think that the resonances with the (post)modern world ought to be as clear as crystal ringing.
Except...
This time, everything is compressed. Instead of the process taking hundreds of years, now it is taking merely decades, and I would say that we are at the tail end of that process now. I have been studying the New World Order and its collapse for twenty years and the acceleration I have seen in the process since 2007 is positively scary. We are now just a few short years (I'd give it five or six at the most) from being in a complete and utter state of anarchistic collapse, similar to that of the days of Honorius. Do I want this to happen? Well, not really, but it doesn't matter if I want it to happen or not. It's not going to change anything, is it? I didn't cause ths problem and I sure as hell can't fix it.
I was asked at the cafe last night by my waiter friend what I thought about the recent steep decline in the World's stock markets. My reply was, "Well, this is the beginning, but you ain't seen nothing yet!" I think that just about sums it up, for sure. So buckle your seatbelts, kiddies, we are in for a hell of a ride! Make all the preps you can and plan to survive but remember that the folks who survived the Collapse of Roman Britain were not the guys hiding out in their hill fort bunkers!
I think that there is a lesson here for us all!

Till next time, probably tomorrow,

Keep your chin up, and
Never, Ever, Ever Give Up! (Sir Winston Churchill)