There are a lot of factors at play here so it is anyone's guess what will happen, but I don't see this being as bad as some predict.
There is room for much more government debt. Japan is at 250% debt and their central bank is buying stocks. A third of the Japanese government budget is debt repayments. Most Western governments are at about 7%. The pain of rolling up the unsustainable financial system and government is currently much more painful than the squeeze (part of which is structural and cannot be mitigated).
The US is in a much better shape than Japan. The top 1% of the US economy lays waste to pretty much anyone else, the demographics are better than Europe, the US gets more than half high skilled immigrants, the share of global FX in USD is virtually unchanged over the last twenty years. There are plenty of problems, but the pain of rolling the game up is huge.
Rolling the game up equals ten years of severe pain. Governments would be able to do it even if they wanted to and were elected to do so.
When the markets crash everyone will run for the dollar. It will probably be the greatest run into an asset ever seen. There will be very little anyone want beyond the dollar - highly deflationary. The Fed will print like crazy, but most of that money will just go into shoring up the banking system. The money won't come into public circulation, like most of the money from QE1, 2, 3. circulating money supply hasn't been touched.
Look at China on the other hand and their M2 is through the roof.
Japan has set the model. You can prop of banking systems for a very long time and the US is far behind the curve.
A blow to the dollar requires people to run out of it into something else, flooding the market with dollars. I can't see that happening. There isn't anything that can fill that void. For now no one wants CNY, RUR, gold in the trillions. China is around two decades away from GDP parity with the US and they are facing serious issues from an already shrinking workforce and poor central planning. At best The US and China becomes equals.
The way I see it panning out:
1) market crash (soon)
2) mass money printing
3) the decline in living standards since '08 will increase, leading for more support for socialism, the top 10% will largely be untouched
4) Western governments will surpass 150% debt to GDP
5) social order will continue to fray
Then another crash, in say 2030, that will take out Japan and other less stable countries that have surpassed 250% debt to GDP, like Italy and Greece. But at this point The US will still be the best house in a bad neighborhood. Depending on factors there should be good growth in South (East) Asia up until about 2040, but none of those countries will rival The US.
If there is any country that is going to have this insane crash some are predicting it's China. Huge USD debt exposure, shrinking work force, trade war, ground zero for Cronoavirus, huge slowing bubble economy based on bad investments of central planners.
My plan has been:
1) sell most stocks (Jan 2019)
2) move into high quality USD bonds - approaching 40% return in one year - and cash
3) I'm now buying some more recession proofing, like Grizzly Short Fund
4) buying and loaning stables coins for the next crypto bottom, maybe $6K
5) wait for the crash
6) give it six months and go all in on cheap stocks and if gold goes down, that too, as once The Fed starts printing like crazy gold should reach new highs