I haven't seen any scenario of what would happen should capitalism break down, but there are a significant number of highly credible analyses that capitalism as it has behaved in the last few decades may be rapidly running its course, and is calling for an overhaul.

Regardless of what the economic ideologues and free-market enthusiasts claim, capitalism is not and never has been one thing. The dismal history at the end of the 18th and early 19th century caused so much unbelievable cruelty and punishment of masses of people that it was, in every advanced nation, pushed to reform, and a significant counter-force, labor unions, were allowed to flourish. At the end of the 19th century, the era of the robber barons and the growth of enormous monopolies had to be cleaned up. The atrocious behavior of food and drug companies through the early part of the 20th century called forth its own Ralph Nader (see the book, "A Hundred Million Guinea Pigs"). This further reined in capitalism through the numerous 3-letter regulatory agencies.

At each of these stages capitalism became something different and better than what it was. The current abuses, perhaps now on an unprecedented scale of a global economy will in turn be reined in, but that no more implies the break-down of capitalism than the earlier episodes of outrage and their correction led to breakdown. The most abusive of capitalists, both personal and institutional, have a consistent history of after they are forced to become good citizens, of claiming that that was their objective all along.

With that historic synopsis I think you need to change the question; I don't see capitalism breaking down, but I see radical reform necessary but not imminent.

I suggest you look at the work of George Soros ("The Crisis of Global Capitalism," 1996) a man who knows the working of capitalism better than anybody, and the distinguished historian of economics, Robert Heilbroner ("Visions of the Future: The Distant Past, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," 1996). I also have a brief article on the subject: "Communism is Dead. Now Let's Bury Capitalism," in the journal, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 44, 1993.

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