MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/. The United States awaits default and a serious financial crisis, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.

"The US is moving more and more steadily toward default with its external debt now exceeding $31.5 trillion," the official said. "The declining level of confidence in the dollar, which is not backed by any real, brick-and-mortar goods, and in the system of bubble-driven speculative transactions in the stock market will push the [United] States into a serious financial crisis," Patrushev noted.

The American financial pyramid, created at the expense of the [dollar] printing press, keeps undergoing major crashes over and over again, the Russian security chief said. The model of runaway emissions, where money is literally thrown at any and all economic problems, cannot keep going perpetually, he noted.