When nations are in terminal economic decline, governments will stop at nothing to keep the party going just a little bit longer. I thought of Diocletian’s desperation a few days ago when I read about the recent sanctions imposed on US rating agency Egan-Jones. It’s a similar story:

For years, major rating agencies (S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch) have championed the outright fraud of our financial system by pinning pristine credit ratings on insolvent governments and their heavily inflated currencies. In doing so, the rating agencies are effectively claiming that the greatest debtor that has ever existed in the history of the world is nearly ‘risk-free’. So when S&P finally downgraded the US one notch in August 2011, the SEC and Justice Department announced that S&P was under investigation just two weeks later.

Egan-Jones, a smaller rating agency, has been even more aggressive, downgrading the US credit rating three times in 18 months. And while the federal government may not have imposed Diocletian’s death penalty, they are just as willing to squash dissent. In the case of Egan-Jones, the SEC brought administrative action against the agency within two weeks of their second downgrade. And a few days ago, the case was settled.

I’m sure you have already guessed the ending: Egan-Jones is banned for the next 18 months from rating US government debt. They’ve effectively been silenced from telling the truth.

The lesson here is obvious. Just as in Roman times, bankrupt nations today will stop at nothing to keep up the scam just a little bit longer. Given that all this is happening at a time when Congress is voting to suspend the debt ceiling entirely, these actions are the clearest sign yet of just how desperate the government has become.

Could the warning signs be any more obvious?

The 2008 crisis would be repeated if unregulated financial activities - blamed for amplifying the meltdown - went unchallenged, he said. He also warned that central banks alone could not eliminate "tail risks". He said that, contrary to some reports, tail risks - essentially worst-case scenarios - in Europe and the United States remained.

Shadow banks are companies that operate like banks but fall outside current oversight. "The next two years will be decisive on ending 'too big to fail' [for banks] and addressing shadow banking and over-the-counter derivatives, that absolutely amplified the last crisis - and will do so again if we don't complete our agenda," he told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Over-the-counter derivatives - unregulated because they are privately negotiated between two parties - were blamed for exacerbating the financial crisis.

After a private meeting of leading commercial bankers, government officials, central bankers and trade union officials, Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg told Reuters: "There is a clear divide between the financial markets, who think a lot of this is fixed, and the people in the real economy and particularly from our side as the governments."

Unemployment in Europe would only fall from 11.8 to 11.7 percent this year, growth was stagnant, real wages were not rising in most countries and it would take countries such as Sweden and France years to reform their labor markets, he said. "So it is very dangerous to declare that the crisis is over because that would undermine the crisis insight that we need to have among the companies, among the population, among the unions, to be able to go through this process," Borg said.

Sweden is not a member of the 17-nation euro zone and Borg has been among the strongest critics of the bloc's handling of its sovereign debt crisis since late 2009.

He also warned that Germany was "out of tune with the rest of the world" when it came to handling the euro crisis. He said he was concerned that any credit bubble now could result in "runaway inflation". "The established theory has collapsed but we haven't actually got a proper understanding of how financial markets operate," Mr Soros said.

"We have introduced synthetic instruments, invented derivatives where we don't fully understand the effect they have." He also said that the response of authorities to inject liquidity into the economy had stabilised the markets, but the priority now should be to steer the economy back to growth.

But Cameron furthered his calls for change at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. "Countries in Europe have their histories, their traditions, their institutions, want their own sovereignty, their ability to make their own choices, and to try and shoehorn countries into a centralized political union would be a great mistake for Europe, and Britain wouldn't be part of it," Cameron told CEOs and investors in his speech.

In Thursday's papers, some German commentators argue for less emotion and more pragmatism, and suggested that EU partners should take a look at what the prime minister wants.

The case stems from a malpractice and wrongful death lawsuit filed by Jeremy Stodghill in the 2006 death of his seven-month pregnant wife Lori at a Catholic hospital in Canon City, Colorado. Her twin fetuses also died.

Stodghill filed the suit against Colorado-based Catholic Health Initiatives, which operates hospitals in 14 states, claiming physicians made no effort to save the fetuses by performing a cesarean section.

In its defense, counsel for the hospital said that under Colorado law, a fetus is not a person and that the twins likely would not have survived even with an emergency C-section. In a letter, Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila, Colorado Springs Bishop Michael Sheridan and Pueblo Bishop Fernando Isern said that Catholic institutions had "a duty to protect and foster human life", which they said begins at conception.

"No Catholic institution may legitimately work to undermine fundamental human dignity," the statement said.

The court found that the Senate was not truly in recess, for the purpose of a recess appointment, when Obama in January 2012 installed three nominees to the National Labor Relations Board. The nominees were facing stiff Republican opposition, and the appointments caused an uproar at the time.

Republicans argued that Obama undercut the Senate's power to confirm nominees because although most of its members were out of town, the Senate had not formally adjourned. In a surprisingly broad ruling, the three-judge panel rejected not only the NLRB appointments but any made while the Senate is in session but on a break. That could limit recess appointments to only a few weeks a year.

"If the decision stands, it would be a significant reduction of the president's recess power," said John Elwood, a Washington lawyer who was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel from 2005 through 2009. "This is a big, big decision for executive power," Elwood said. "It is one of the most important decisions in decades."