On the evening of April 17, 1006 AD, a little more than 1,000 years ago, human beings from around the world looked up into the night sky and saw a brilliant light, the likes of which they had never before seen in their entire lives.
Most people thought it was a new star– the brightest, by far, that anyone had ever observed. Some thought it was an omen or a sign from the gods.
We know now that neither was the case. The phenomenon that everyone saw that evening was actually a supernova originating more than 7,000 light years away from Earth. And scientists now refer to it as “SN 1006”, named after the year of its observation.
SN 1006 is especially famous because it is likely the brightest ever recorded in human history.
It was so bright, in fact, that its light could even be seen in the daytime. It was also seen by people as far away as China, Iran, Egypt, and Europe.
A group of monks in Switzerland reported being able to see SN 1006 for three months after its initial appearance, while astronomers in China’s Song Dynasty continued to observe the supernova until at least December of that year.
A supernova, as you’re probably aware, is an exploding star. It’s essentially the final phase of a star’s life cycle.
When stars are born, they’re nothing but gas and dust. In time, they grow into enormous stellar forces that cast their light and power across the solar system and give life to satellite planets. Everything in their domain literally revolves around the star.
But even stars eventually peak… and decline. They deplete their primary resources, and their core begins to shrink. Eventually, with its resources completely exhausted, a star begins to collapse… at which point it can explode in a giant supernova that can cause havoc and destruction across the galaxy.
This is in many ways a great analogy for empire. Like stars, empires are born from often humble beginnings. A handful of people come together in difficult circumstances, and the odds of success are very low.
But with luck, that small group of people turns into a fledgling civilization that continues to grow… and eventually rises into a vast and powerful empire that shines its light across the region, or possibly the world.
Like a star, everything else revolves around the empire; even tiny, distant nations are in its orbit and depend heavily on the empire for trade and economic activity.
But eventually the empire exhausts itself. It eats away at itself, depleting its most precious resources until there’s nothing left.
Just like a star that declines and collapses after consuming all the hydrogen in its core, an empire consumes the very things that made it successful and powerful to begin with. And when an empire declines and collapses, just like a star, the effects of that collapse cascade across the region for years to come.
It should not be a controversial statement to say that the world’s dominant empire today, the United States, is in obvious decline.
The US has steadily depleted and destroyed the very resources that made it so powerful in the first place– things like freedom, capitalism, self-reliance, social cohesion, reputation, military strength, and fiscal restraint.
The latter bears some additional discussion.
On Friday I wrote to you that the US government had just published its annual financial report showing, among other things, that they lost a mind-blowing $4.1 trillion in Fiscal Year 2022, which was $1 trillion worse than the year before.
Going through the rest of the report, you’ll see them describe the utterly dire situation of Social Security, whose trust funds are set to run out of money within the next 10 years or so. They also forecast the national debt to reach more than FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT of GDP.
But what really struck me about this report… above everything else… was the cover letter; this is the one-page executive summary from the Treasury Secretary right at the beginning of the report.
You’d think with such horrific financial results and long-term projections that the Treasury Secretary would spend her cover letter calling for immediate reform and fiscal discipline.
But there wasn’t a single word of caution in her letter.
Instead the Secretary bragged about how great the economy is, and praised their ridiculous Inflation Reduction Act as “our nation’s most aggressive action to tackle the climate crisis.”
Come again? Wasn’t the Inflation Reduction Act supposed to, you know, reduce inflation?
But they’re not even trying to tell that lie anymore. Now they’re fully admitting that the Inflation Reduction Act was just climate change legislation masquerading as economic support.
The rest of her letter is more useless bombast… making it crystal clear that the people who prepare these reports are just fanatical bureaucrats steeped in their own self-righteousness, as opposed to responsible managers trying to solve problems.
So it’s REALLY difficult to study this annual financial report and not come away with a highly disquieting long-term outlook for the United States.
I’ve been talking about this for years, so this is nothing new to long-time Sovereign Man readers.
I’ve written extensively about the accelerated financial decline of the government. Fourteen years ago when I started this publication, I looked at the trajectory America was on and predicted rising inflation, dwindling freedom, growing social divisions, soaring deficits, and more.
But even I’ve been surprised at government officials’ complete inability to take these problems seriously, let alone come up with rational solutions.
Perhaps some day they’ll finally realize that they’re out of resources and that their star is about to collapse. They’ll look up in the sky and see the brilliant flash of light and realize, “Jeez we really need to do something about all this debt.”
But by then it will be too late.
When people across the world looked up in the night sky 1,000 years ago and saw the brilliant light of SN 1006, what they didn’t know is that the light was from an exploding star more than 7,000 light years away.
In other words, the star had actually exploded 7,000 years prior; it just took that long for the light to travel all the way to Earth and be visible to people on this planet.
Similarly, by the time the inhabitants of Planet Politician see the light of their fiscal supernova, the star will have already exploded long before then… and there won’t be anything they can do about it.
But you can.
You have all the power and all the resources at your disposal to diversify internationally, legally slash your taxes, put away more for retirement, grow your income, generate higher investment returns, protect your assets, secure your family’s future, and much more.
