Slow collapse - the collapse everyone is too scared to consider

All will be okay after these past Paris climate talks. Every school kid will be given a solar panel, containing 20 grams of silver, to take home. This will reinvigorate the sector.

 

I don't think things are manipulated.
Too much chaos and competition to imagine anyone in control.
Things just stumble along.
It's easy to give human intelligence too much credit.

 

Both lasted more than 500 years so looks like we've got a good while to go

 

Nope.

 

To me it seems all dependant on how long the U.S can hold out for.

Seeing as the USD is the reserve currency its wot makes the world go around.

So many different scenarios are possible at the moment???

 

You should look at the data input of central banks, and how they (and governments) use it in their monetary policy, both macro and micro economical.
You'd be surprised about their level of control.
Look at where they succeeded in the past 5 years. They inflicted nearly all speculators the false impression that they printed money and made sure it was spent. The very opposite was and is true. They made speculators waste billions of their fiatsavings. And again for a control reason: the lower the amount savings, the less annual monetary inflation eventual interest rate hikes will cost them.
It's even dead easy to imagine that they orchestrated the entire 2008 crisis on purpose. Central banks can bail out as many companies/banks they want (yes the obvious method) but they didn't. They were much smarter and longer term visioned. We're now 7 years later and they managed to continue this game all along.