What could do America in

Daily Mail, UK - America's status as the world's greatest power will end for the same reason as its predecessors - crushed by a mountain of debt that politicians find convenient to ignore, historians have warned. And the United States' century at the top could be coming to an end quicker than expected with countries in Asia increasingly likely to pull the plug.Interest payments on the debt overtook spending on defense earlier this month, but it will not be force of arms that brings the country down, according to historian Professor Niall Ferguson.  'Any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense will not stay great for very long,' he said in a piece he penned for Bloomberg, explaining a theory he calls Ferguson's Law. 'True of Habsburg Spain, true of ancien régime France, true of the Ottoman Empire, true of the British Empire. This law is about to be put to the test by the US beginning this very year.'