RE: The US is the largest CREDITOR
Morte D'America, Morte D'Terra
"The death of America is the death of Earth."
Despite all the hype though, we're not nearly as in danger of "falling apart" as everyone thinks. America will eventually decline, as all major powers do, but the notion that a nation comprising nearly a third of the GDP of the planet (more than the next three largest economies combined), with more defense spending than the next ten combined and more naval tonnage than the world combined (to say nothing of more combined hours of combat experience among our servicemen than the rest of the planet combined), is simply going to be here-today-gone-tomorrow, is patently ludicrous.
Rome did not reach its peak (or really even begin climbing toward it) until after Hannibal's Army reached the Italian Peninsula itself. The British Empire didn't even approach the apex of their power until a century after losing the bulk of their North American colonies.
A decade of setbacks does not signal the decline of a superpower. Short of a doomsday war, a meteor the size of a 747 crashing into Kansas, or the Yellowstone Caldera blowing its top, America will be around for a while. And even after we decline from power (likely at least a century hence), the fall of an empire does not mean the destruction of the nation at its core, as any of the former Empires of Europe, as well as Turkey (the Ottomans), Iraq (Babylon) and Iran (Persia) can attest.