The probability that a boom is about to end will rise as a nation gets too comfortable and as private companies and individuals run up debts to buy frivolous luxuries, particularly imported luxuries. This period of extravagance will make it impossible for the nation to pay its foreign bills, while widening the gap between billionaires and the rest, and between the countryside and the nation’s capital, provoking a political backlash that brings down the now aging regime, after which the cycle can begin again.
