How America Goes Broke — ft. Ray Dalio

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Today's number, $5,000.

That's how much a man gave to each of his three girlfriends to try and figure out who he should marry.

One spent it on a glow-up, saying she'd always be attractive.

The second bought stuff for him, saying I'll always be generous.

The third invested in a Vanguard mutual fund, saying we'll always be financially secure.

So, Ed, you know who he chose to marry?

The one with the biggest hits.

Listen to me.

Markets are bigger than us.

What you have here is a structural change in the world distribution.

Cash is trash.

Stocks look pretty attractive.

Something's going to break.

Forget about it.

Ed, how are you?

Back with a bang.

I love that joke.

You know, just, I love how you go into these virtues signaling.

I'm 26 and a big deal.

Like, I commit to you to report on the news, distinct to the politics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You hate that line.

That is your least favorite line.

My commitments to the audience.

As 70-year-old women on watching MSNBC touch themselves, I commit to being more profane and more inappropriate.

I want to put this, I want to dispel any likelihood I will ever run for office, much less get hired or acquired by Comcast, who should acquire us because we're actually growing the profit universe

quite robustly.

But, anyways, how are you, Ed?

I'm doing very well.

It's good to have you back finally.

It's been way too long.

It has been a while.

I mean,

is this going to continue?

Every year, I'm always surprised at how long you're gone.

And by the way, every time you also, I know you get antsy because you keep on checking in on the business and you think we're not making money anymore.

So I'm starting to think maybe you shouldn't, maybe you shouldn't be taking this long of a vacation.

What do you think?

I really like not working and I'm really good at it.

But I got to be honest, this time I did get bored.

I got antsy.

I started harassing Catherine saying, what if we did this?

What if we...

And she's like, yeah, I got four podcasts to get out the door today.

Leave me alone.

What have you been doing?

What did you do in Argus?

We closed the office for two weeks.

What did you do?

I went to London for a wedding, which was great.

Hung out with my family and good to see my friends get married.

And then I went to Sardinia with my girlfriend.

Hold on.

Daddy's, Daddy, you're still in the impressor mode.

Wow.

And you're not.

You're off to a visa every three weeks.

That's just arrested adolescents.

Back to you.

So you went to Sardinia.

I haven't been there.

What's that like?

Sardinia is great.

It's very expensive, I've got to say.

It's pretty unbelievable.

I feel like that's all of the Mediterranean at this point.

I mean, it's all these Americans showing up to Beza, Mykonos, or Sardinia, Capri, whatever it is.

And the prices are just out of control.

I had an amazing time, but

it was, it was,

I got to say,

it's quite shocking, I will tell you that.

But beautiful place,

great weather, obviously.

Great polity scene.

Porto Trevo's

really nice but i mean um but unbelievably expensive there was a there was there was a plate of dumplings there were a dish it was four dumplings and guess how guess how much it cost i didn't i didn't end up buying it but guess how much that cost four dumplings a lot how much 125 euros were they truffle dumplings or something nope or did you get to eat them backstage with black coffee or something no no none of that no no one reports on it because no one feels sorry for it but at the high end which you are now a part of is you're still trying to impress someone and you're overpaid but the greatest inflation, I believe, has happened at the high end for a few reasons.

One, you can't spin up Sardinia or a five-star hotel.

They take 10 years to build.

So even though the demand is there, there's just a finite supply.

And the fastest growing demographic group are one percenters.

And then you layer in the following.

Essentially, since COVID, people have figured out that experiences are more important than things.

Sales of luxury goods, actual things, hard goods are down.

But dining is up.

I think it's 4%, travel is up 8%, and jet travel is up 12%.

So what do you have?

You have

this, it's great to be a five-star hotel or five-star restaurant, especially in the summer.

And then the kind of the chaser on chaser on chaser is that I noticed in Colorado, it was actually quite empty because of COVID.

There's all this pent-up demand to go to Europe.

So you have this influx of increasingly wealthy people who value experiences into Europe into a finite supply of really high-end places.

And the result is, I've noticed it too.

The prices are just outrageous.

Outrageous.

And

I noticed it in hotels.

I was at the Rosewood in Sao Paulo.

And

Brazil is about half the cost, or Sao Paulo is about half the cost of New York.

and probably half the cost of major metros in Europe.

But if you're looking to go to Ibiza or Mykonos or any hotspot south of France, it's extraordinary.

What's interesting is I see wealthy people or wealthy people my age and I see young people your age and I assume the people your age their parents are paying for it that they're rich kids I can't imagine unless they're you know world-class podcasters that people your age can afford that because it is yeah i've noticed that too the the inflation at the at the uh at the high end is extraordinary i wonder if we have reached peak europe i wonder if we're sort of we hit the apex

because

my instinct now is, I mean, I had a great time, but do I really want to run it back at that level of expense?

Or would I rather just go to somewhere beautiful in the US?

I mean,

this is at least what I'm thinking about for next summer.

It's like, why don't I just go out west?

Why don't I go?

I mean, obviously Aspen, I'm sure the prices are insane there too.

But I don't know.

I'm just, just, I feel like Europe, everyone's doing Europe at this point.

The prices have gotten so insane.

Every American is going to the south of France or Italy on their vacation or all the 1%ers in America.

And it shows.

I mean,

everyone you meet there is pretty much an American.

And the prices are just, I mean, at a certain point, it's not really worth it.

At least not for me.

Eurofabulous places all over the world,

the places that are really in demand, have kind of figured out a way to almost coordinate.

It's almost like they collude and they create a certain price level.

But Europe is the next level.

Like you said, south of France, Ibiza, Sardinia, these places.

You did see about two years ago, and I thought this was fascinating, on Instagram, a bunch of people took to Instagram and basically said that Mikinos had become ridiculous.

And there were all these TikToks of $34

margaritas.

And supposedly, last summer, it was tourism to Abitha and to to Mikonos was way down.

And shockingly, places like Scotland went ape shit in terms of tourism.

But supposedly, this last summer was this hot girl summer where basically all the hot places are back in vogue again.

But everything catches up.

Like, I used to go to Cabo San Lucas, which I thought was a relatively good deal when I was your age.

I would go to a tacky place like Mazalon, or I used to go.

I think the best deal, if you're moving out of the, okay, I'm no longer trying to impress my girlfriend and I'm not allowed to go where the hot girls are,

then I would suggest that the place

best value and luxury travel, hands down, hands down, is Mexico.

Like the Rosewood Maya Coba or going to a great hotel in Cabo San Lucas or, you know, if you want to get more cultural San Miguel de Allende,

you can get five-star luxury in Mexico still at a relatively decent price.

Other than that, everything's gone absolutely

batched crazy in terms of cost.

And it's all of Europe, by the way.

I think, I mean,

it basically doesn't matter where you're going.

If you're trying to be on the beach in Europe in the summer, you're going to be emptying your pockets.

That's just, it basically doesn't matter anymore.

This is what you should do next summer, and it'll be crazy expensive, but it's more romantic.

You should, and you should have talked to me.

I know this stuff.

You should have gone to the point.

I was going to say, you should be my travel agent for next summer.

Yeah, well, you never know.

I need a job soon.

So

you just want the biggest biggest hits.

Anyways, go to Capri.

I think that is spectacular.

That's the most romantic place in the world.

But by the way, if you say you're going to Capri,

your girlfriend's going to think you, you know, you're bringing, you're going to put a ring on it.

People don't go to Capri just to hang out with their girlfriend.

That's a tough one.

Okay.

Well, noted.

Moving right along.

It's like, okay,

okay.

What's GDP growth in Switzerland?

How do I get them off this?

Now I'm going to self.

Tell them she listens to the podcast.

Should we get into our interview with Ray Dalio, one of the most legendary investors of all time?

No, no, I'm not.

I'm not done yet.

Who was your favorite guest in August?

Guest on this podcast, on Property Market.

No, your favorite guest on Rogan.

Yeah, favorite guest on this podcast.

I think Mark Zandy was pretty good.

I mean, I love, I always love co-host with Josh Brown.

He's always great.

But Zandy, Zandy was mine.

He was really, I thought that was a very substantive podcast.

Really enjoyed it.

Really enjoyed it.

so you've been tuning in then yeah i listen to all your stuff i learn a lot i like it actually actually you and claire do a decent job not a good job decent solid four scale one to ten solid four solid four speaking of which i don't know how to i'm trying to think of a segue here should we get on to our conversation with that's not the right segue that's not the right segue

solid four out of ten and let's bring in our next guest four out of four let's bring in the most successful let's bring in the most successful investor in history how about if we do that i love it let's do it here is our conversation with Ray Dalio, global macro investor, founder of Bridgewater Associates and New York Times best-selling author.

Ray, so good to have you on the podcast again with us.

Thank you for being here.

Ed, so good to be with you.

So you have a new book out, and I think that's where we'll probably want to start.

Although I'd like to get your reactions to a lot of things.

You were just saying off mic that we are living in interesting times, which I agree with.

But we'll start with your book, How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle.

If you want to go buy that book, it is out now.

You can go buy it now.

How Countries Go Broke by Ray Dalio.

Let's start with this, Ray.

How do countries go broke?

The credit system is like the circulatory system of the body.

It brings credit, which is like nutrients, to the different parts of the body.

And if those credits are used to create incomes that can service that debt then it's a healthy process

but when governments raise the in the debt relative to their incomes and debt service accumulates uh relative to their incomes it squeezes out spending And you can see that, you can measure that, and you see it, that squeezing out of other spending.

And then

that causes eventually something that's the equivalent of a debt crisis or what I'll maybe call

a heart attack.

Also,

there's a supply and demand issue for countries, just like people.

So, when governments have a lot of debt and want to run large deficits, that means they have to sell a lot of debt, they go to buyers and they

try to sell that debt.

And one man's debts are another man's income assets.

So those assets have to provide an attractive real return and be of value.

And when that doesn't happen, not only do you have to sell the new supply to fund the deficit, but you also have a problem.

You might have a problem because there may be selling of the existing supply.

And when that happens, that puts central banks and central governments in

difficult positions.

The economics and the debt for a country are the same as that for an individual or a government, except the government can print money and they can grab money through taxes.

So that puts them in the position where they, when they have that imbalance, what they do is they print money and they buy the debt to try to make up for that imbalance.

And that lowers the real returns of those assets and it lowers the value of money, which the debts are a problem for.

And so you get into the self-reinforcing cycle, including that central banks have losses and have negative net worth.

And then they have to deal with that cash flow problem.

And so both central governments and central banks find themselves in the position of creating debt to pay for their debts.

I think everyone probably has a specific country in mind while you were describing this.

But from my understanding, you've been looking at this throughout history.

And before we get into what's happening in America, lots happening in America, I'm just, I'd love to hear more about how this has played out in the past, perhaps

in American history, but also perhaps among other nations.

This has happened throughout history in all countries, all times.

The basic issue is, you know, what is money and what is debt?

That is a promise to deliver money.

And is that money hard money?

that actually gets delivered on?

Or is that money fiat money or printed money that doesn't get delivered on?

But if you go back through all history repeatedly, you always see that.

I can recount the times.

1971 was a good example of the breakdown of the monetary system when we went from promises to deliver gold that were defaulted on, and then we went to a fiat monetary system.

All countries throughout all time have dealt with this.

And

the reason I wanted to write the book is I wanted to show very, very clearly the mechanics and symptoms of this problem so that one could understand it mechanistically and measure it.

Because we can measure it right now, for example, in the U.S., if you want, I'll take you through what the numbers are, but it's important.

Just some numbers I have in front of me.

Our national debt in America is currently $37 trillion.

Our net interest payments are $900 billion per year.

It is the interest is our second largest federal expenditure.

So when you look at America's debt situation right now,

you talk about the big debt cycle, you talk about how countries go broke.

How far along in the cycle are we?

How far along is America?

This year, the government will spend about $7 trillion

and it will take in about $5 trillion.

So it will spend 40%

more

than it's taking in.

And it really can't cut expenditures much.

Having done a lot of that, the debt is now about six times the amount of money it takes in.

The amount of money that it has to come up with for next year

is $12 trillion, and that amount of essentially debt it has to sell.

That comes $1 trillion

about

is, which is half our budget deficit, goes to interest.

$9 trillion

have to be rolled forward.

It's maturing.

And then we'll sell an additional $2 trillion.

So you have to sell a lot of debt.

We're now at a point where

there will be an adding to a lot of debt at a point that's close to the edge.

Because

as we add to that debt,

then those numbers and that supply-demand picture worsen past the point really of being able to rectify it.

So, because then what do you do?

I was in Washington and speaking with

you know, top people on both parties.

And the problem is really a political problem.

In the book, I explained that

if there was a cut in the budget deficit to about 3% of GDP,

which could happen in three ways,

that they could stabilize the debt where it is.

And those three ways

of cutting the budget deficit to about 3% of GDP

would be basically equally in taxes and in spending, which would be in total amount taxes, total amount of spending would be probably a 4% increase in taxes and a 4% decrease in spending.

That wouldn't quite get you there.

But what it would do is improve the supply-demand picture of the debt so that interest rates would come down

and interest rates coming down would be good for debt service payments because so much goes to interest.

That's why interest is so important.

But you can't force interest rates unnaturally down

because

then it discourages the holding of debt assets because it makes it a bad deal for the creditor to hold those assets.

The reaction, both everybody I spoke to agreed with the numbers and the mechanics.

And

I've spoken to all most federal reserve heads and

other central bank heads and treasury secretaries, and there's agreement about that.

The reason I say it's political is that the answer that I got back from those in Washington who were dealing with it is that

they say, Ray, you have to understand that we have to make one,

at least one, maybe two promises.

and those promises are

first i promise not to raise your taxes and second

i promise not to cut your benefits in order to get um elected

and so that's where we are on the financial conditions i would say in the united states

We'll be right back after the break.

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We're back with Profitty Markets.

Isn't this a kind of confirmation that sort of this 45-year strategy I would describe it of if you were to describe America's strategy,

I would say loosely speaking, the strategy has been to cut taxes, that maintain spending, cut taxes, and our most productive, our wealthiest citizens, corporations, will figure out a way to reinvest that capital because they're more efficient and the growth will compensate for

the reduction in revenues.

And it strikes me, it just hasn't worked.

And that if

we're going to fix this, as you said, is it cut benefits or raise taxes?

The answer is both.

So

what I want to get your thoughts on, and I actually am more hopeful that the American public is ready for an adult conversation.

So I want to throw some ideas at you.

So the question is, if we have to raise taxes, what would be the least taxing taxes?

And I'll throw a couple ideas at you.

Elimination or vast reduction in the ceiling on

the

state tax exemption.

You're just not going to get any, you're going to be dead, so it doesn't matter.

And your kids aren't much happier or less happier if they get 3 million versus 5 million.

That's one thing.

And then age and

means test, some of the entitlements, specifically Social Security.

I think those two are reasonable.

I think here's the problem.

And I found that

everybody's into their particulars, and they argue so much about the particulars.

It's like being on a boat that everybody agrees is going to hit the rocks and that

they need to turn the boat, but they can't agree whether to turn it left or right because they're so hung up on their particulars that

so like I believe you know take the 3% pledge.

If you can't agree on what to do,

then do it proportionately.

I don't, you know, I don't really care.

Get there.

Okay.

So,

you know, like we can get into that, but

I think please take the 3% pledge.

Agree to do it proportionately or find some way that you do it, because otherwise the arguing about it is going to lead us to hit the rocks.

My understanding of economic history is every fiat currency has ultimately failed because of the dynamic you're talking about.

Political pressure to not cut spending.

results in the inability to raise taxes, results in basically

the failure you're talking about.

It kind of plays out everywhere.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: What are you telling these guys?

In addition to the pledge, what is realistic

on the tax side?

What do you think could be ⁇ is it an alternative minimum tax on corporations and individuals?

Is it a reduction in exemptions?

I mean,

it feels like ⁇ it feels like either the market is going to address this in a very ugly, crude way, or we're going to have to get out ahead of it.

And your book is kind of saying it may be too late.

Aaron It's likely to be too late.

To be specific, what's going to happen, they're starting, they will soon start

to talk about

26.

And 26 is a midterm election year.

And so it won't be until after 26

that

the best you can hope for is a bipartisan commission

in which both sides

approach the question and hopefully smart people then choose to do their engineering and their political negotiating to come up with a plan

that probably

you know won't be put into place because commissions don't work that well or if it does will be put in awfully late.

So

we're all just

playing with ourselves when we think about this idea

of which one it should be

rather than dealing with which things there should be.

There are all sorts of things that, in particular, which we can digress into that can be done.

I mean, just at the big picture, just figure it like, can you do 4%

one way or another in taxes?

And if you had to do everything across the board, because you couldn't agree on anything, could you do that?

Could you do 4%

on spending?

Could you do that?

Even looking at that question of whether you could do that is interesting because there are some things that cannot be changed.

You know, like, what are you going to do on some things?

But to start to look at it that way, and then you can go on to, is this thing better than the other thing?

But, you know, I can't be optimistic.

Aaron Powell, but how does it play out?

Say we don't get our act together, we can't come to an agreement around 4%.

What economic history can you point to about what actually happens?

People say, well, they don't show up at our debt auction.

They show up.

They just demand higher prices, right?

Well, how does this actually play out if we do nothing?

There'll be actions by both the government and the

marketplace.

The actions by the government,

some of which are in the works,

is to try to

lean on holders of the debt, such as foreign countries and so on, to buy debt and

to

not sell their debt.

Another thing will be to shorten the maturities of the debt.

When things get bad, there might be capital controls.

And

likely, there'll be the

central bank coming in and buying a lot of the debt, which will depreciate the value of the money.

So you would see that in the form of the dollar going down, but also other currencies, because they have their problems going down, gold prices going up.

It would be something like

what happened from 71, you know, 1970.

You know, if you take the late 70s,

when we had then the world was operating under a gold standard, which was created in 1944 at the end of World War II, when they had to define what was the monetary order, how would the system work?

And that was gold.

uh backed uh the money or it was actually thought of differently they thought gold was money and all the money that we think of today, like fiat currency, was like checks in a checkbook that you would then turn in to get your money.

But when the checks in the checkbook

or the checks outstanding were much greater than the gold in the bank, the real money in the bank, and there was a turning in of that and they couldn't cover it like all bank crisis is.

There's not enough money in the bank and they wanted it.

Then there was a pause in that, a breaking of that promise to get the real money.

So the bank, in this case, the central bank, defaulted

and

devalued and printed money so everybody would get their money.

And that's why we had the stagflation period of the 1970s.

The exact same thing happened in the 1930s.

So on August 15th, 1971, President Nixon got on the television and announced that change in the monetary policy, that breakdown of the monetary policy and going to a fiat monetary policy.

In

March of 1933, President Roosevelt got on the radio and announced this exact same policy because there wasn't enough hard money,

not enough gold.

And so that's what it, you know, that's what it looks like.

I would say that you were one of the first people to really popularize this issue, at least in recent years.

You were kind of the first one to sound the alarm.

I mean, this latest book is about the big debt cycle, how countries go broke.

But a lot of your books and a lot of the stuff that you've been writing and talking about is along this theme.

And it was my view at the beginning of the year that this was something that people

everywhere in America, but also and more specifically in Washington,

about.

And I really thought that because that was part of the Trump platform.

There was a lot of talk about getting spending under control.

We had Doge, and the idea of Doge was to get the spending under control.

Regardless of how one might think all of that was handled, that was the idea.

And I thought that people were on board with this issue.

I thought that people cared about this.

Then I see this big, beautiful Bill Act,

and I learned that it will add $4 trillion to our national debt.

$4 trillion is the amount of the estimated increase from what it would have been, the amount of debt, if the tax bill didn't get modified and the tax cuts were rolled over.

$4 trillion is that?

Yes.

No, no, no.

The correct number.

of the amount of debt increase from the $36 trillion that you mentioned before over the next 10 years is about 25 trillion because just look at like we run 2 trillion a year deficit

okay and that adds up

on the compounded basis to about 25 trillion

so the correct statement to make is that our debt will increase by about it probably will increase by about 25 trillion not about four trillion.

So we increase the debt by 25 trillion.

I've also seen, I mean, I think that the higher the numbers, the more confusing it gets.

But one statistic that I think is very relevant, as you say,

we're going to crowd out our ability to spend money on things that we need.

As I said before, we're spending almost a trillion dollars a year just on servicing the debt.

But because of the big, beautiful bill, we're going to double that to almost $2 trillion per year by 2034.

In sum,

I thought we all cared about this.

I thought that people in Washington cared about this.

That's what everyone was saying.

And yet here we are, this big, beautiful bill has been passed and it's basically going to do the total opposite of what I thought we all were worried about.

And so my question to you, as the guy who's been talking about this and who's been sounding the alarm, are you not frustrated by what is happening in Washington right now?

And when you go to Washington and you talk to these people and you say, This is a problem, and they say, Yeah, yeah, we agree, it's a problem, it's really bad.

I'm wondering if you even believe them.

First of all, I don't get frustrated, I'm just analytical.

Fair enough.

I'm just, you know, it is what it is, and

different people have different perspectives.

And I would say I think that the problems are very well recognized, and that the administration's point of view is that these things are problems.

So

you have a renovation plan that they have,

which is tariffs will bring in tax revenue, and they are bringing in big tax revenue, and that

that will protect American businesses in various ways.

and help in the budget deficit.

And they would

say that stimulation is required to raise the incomes to create the tax, just like Scott had mentioned.

The best way to get out of this is through stimulation and taxation.

And then

leaning on other countries in various ways, partially to pay their expenses,

to help to cut.

our expenses

and

to encourage them with a big E under encourage them to invest in the United States and buy our debt.

So I'm very nonpartisan.

Okay.

I'm just trying to be analytical.

And so I convey my pictures of these things as accurately as I can.

And I wouldn't do justice to our discussion if I didn't convey that perspective.

The key question then is: do you think that that strategy

could work?

I mean,

assuming these issues are being taken seriously

and assuming that this is the way that we are to deal with them,

do you think it's going to work?

Do you think that could get us out of the hole if we're so far along on this path of,

as you say, going broke?

Is this going to help us not be broke in the future?

I don't think it's going to get us there.

I think there are some aspects to it that have a lot of merit, and there are lots of aspects to it that I would disagree with.

And I think the real problem of our country right now is the breakdown of the effectiveness of democracy.

Could you say more about that?

I'm going to preface it with something.

I'm a practical guy.

I'm not an academic,

but I've studied history.

The first time that about the 1971 breakdown of the monetary system, I was clerking on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

And I thought when Nixon made that announcement that that was going to cause a crisis, I went on the floor of the Stock Exchange, and I saw the stock market up more than it was in

decades.

And that led me to study 19,

the prior devaluations.

I never saw one of those before.

And I learned that in March 1933, Roosevelt made the same move, and I understood more of the mechanics of all of this.

And that also led me to understand how the debt problem existed that allowed me to anticipate the 2008 financial crisis

and the

2010 to 15 European financial crisis and do very well during that period.

I would say that there there are five main forces that interact to drive everything.

We're talking about the debt mechanics.

There is also a political mechanics

that enters into this, the battle between the left and the right.

And when you get into a situation where there are irreconcilable differences, then the system classically creates a type of great internal conflict in which the system itself is in jeopardy.

Okay.

Democracy, one of the big problems of democracy is that people vote for what they want, and you can't maybe necessarily do what's best for them sometimes.

And we now have, we are now at a stage where we have irreconcilable differences.

And so, how our system is working and the moves that we're seeing politically to get control,

to get control, remind me very much of the 1930s,

as does the STET situation.

As I said, there are five.

The third great force that has a big effect is the international geopolitical world order.

The way it works is,

you know, who's in control of the order, the system, the world system.

It's always the powerful country.

So in 1945,

the winners of the war set the rules.

And the United States was the dominant power, had 80% of the world's money, gold, half the world's, anyway, it set the rules.

Then, what happens is rising powers challenge the existing powers, and there's no world court that resolves these things.

And so, you have a great conflict.

And that requires military spending, that requires

these actions.

So, we are,

you know, as you can see, as you watch

in Beijing, Xi and

Putin and Modi and the military parade.

Okay, this is all part of the picture.

And so it enters into even the economic policy.

Tariffs, one of the purposes of tariffs is to get independence because you need self-sufficiency.

in a world where you may be cut off or we might be cutting others off in one in certain type of war and that's financial so that's the third influence The fourth influence throughout history has been acts of nature.

Droughts, floods, and pandemics have killed more people than wars, and it's a factor.

And it's a big factor now, and it's costly.

It's estimated that the cost of that will be about $8 trillion a year for the world.

And our world GDP, that it's $100 trillion.

That's a lot of money.

And then number five in the force has always been technology.

In other words, man's inventiveness of technologies have been revolutionary and raised living standards as reflected in life expectancy, GDP per capita, and so on.

And now we have, we can't have this conversation without talking about technology changes on this whole picture.

Because now with artificial intelligence and so on, does that create productivity miracles that help to make?

that money, that problem less of a problem?

And what does it all mean?

So all five of those forces are interacting to create the dynamic that we now have and also raise a lot of question marks because this is not a precise, none of those things really can be thought through so precisely.

As you look at the risks to America right now.

And as you say, your job is not only to analyze these risks, but also to bet on them.

And you've had a good track record.

And, you know, you've gone through some of those risks.

We have this debt crisis, an impending debt crisis.

We've got internal political conflict.

We've got external conflict with China,

one of the most geopolitical precarious times

probably in the last 50 years.

Many, many risks.

What is your number one risk?

What is the thing that you are most worried about?

What do you think is the biggest threat to America and to America's dominance in 2025?

First, human nature.

Can we

rise above

our own

selfish, fighting,

possibly self-destructing or mutually destructing tendencies

to

find

the common solutions or the compromises to be able to

not

have

the worst of what is possible.

I mean, so that's number one.

Number two

is in each country

being strong and in it together.

Okay,

I believe

if the United States is very strong and healthy, that's the best thing it can do.

Okay, it's the safest thing to be doing.

But I think

that that can only come come about by

us not fighting with each other so much and

a strong middle.

And a strong middle, I mean

policies

that truly are effective in creating improvements, like in education.

Like we have a problem.

60% of all Americans have below a sixth grade reading level.

So anyway, we have a problem with that.

If you want to make a a society successful, there are very few things you have to do.

I think that

we can't do it with fighting with each other.

We have to have a strong middle, strong means also being able to enforce the things that need to be done that may be unpopular.

Okay, like.

dealing with this budget situation and the like.

I don't know, you know, these are long shots, by the way.

I don't, these are the things that are necessary.

Stay with us.

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Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

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We're back with Prof G Markets.

Ray, we've been drawing parallels between the current situation in the United States, the United States and the 30s.

And I actually see

as strong or stronger parallels.

I'm curious if you see the same

comparison between the U.S.

now and 30s Germany.

And that is economic anxiety.

We don't have a Weimar-like collapse.

We We have a collapse in the middle class.

Political polarization.

Income inequality.

Populist strongman appeal that speaks for itself.

All the scapegoating of quote-unquote the enemies within.

We're not worried about Russian soldiers pouring over the border in Ukraine or the CCP.

We're worried about your neighbor or universities or immigrants.

Media and information chaos.

There was a lot of that back then, same now.

And I used to hold out hope: well, our institutions are stronger and

our leaders don't have their own private armies.

And those two things now seem as if they've been compromised.

So am I catastrophizing here or is a deficit problem, quite frankly, smallball compared to what could happen here?

Aaron Ross Powell, you can't separate the financial from the political, which you're talking about, internal political.

And

I agree with that from the other three that I also mentioned.

They're all reinforcing.

Yes, we won't use the terms because they're evocative.

But

yes, Germany had an economic crisis.

And before Germany, there was Italy and places were not run on times.

They said to make the trains run on time, that we needed,

you know, will somebody make this thing work well?

And so you had out of that the autocratic leaders.

Four democracies in

the 30s, four democracies chose to have autocracies or dictatorships, however, because of the great disorder and the great in

fighting.

And so you saw that in

Germany, Italy, Japan, and

Spain.

And so we are at a time where americans are saying

uh will somebody gain control of this situation and so when you look at whether it's washington dc and the national guard going into washington dc

and other things

um there is an appeal

to a lot of people about that.

And you and when we're dealing with

how this is working with democracy and the loss of trust in our legal system, that is a belief that almost everything has been politicized, that you're on one side or the other, and you have to pick inside and fight for it.

That is where we are.

So I don't think what you're saying is incorrect at all.

Ray, one of my takeaways

from

your insights is

almost that this is inevitable.

I mean, when we talk about the idea of cycles, the fact that this happens to many countries over and over again, and here we are again, we're in the big debt cycle once again.

And the thing that you describe of we're all on the ship, we're headed towards the iceberg, and people say, No, we got to go left, and the other people, no, we've got to go right,

and ultimately we just crash into the iceberg.

That's kind of where I'm beginning to land on this debt issue, and also on

the dominance of the American empire itself.

I'm starting to think, you know, this is kind of just the way it is.

And we can say that we're going to get spending under control.

We can say that we're going to get down to three or four percent as you put forward.

But ultimately, this stuff is too difficult.

Humans are too selfish.

There is too much conflict.

And the way things shape out is the cycle just happens over and over again.

And so, in a lot of ways, maybe

we just resign to that.

I mean, I'm not sure I want to go that far right now, but that's kind of where I land on this.

I'm wondering if

you would object to my landing there.

And if you think that's kind of the situation we're in, what do we do about that?

What do we do about that as investors, as young people, as professionals?

What do we do about that?

I think

that we are

most probably headed in that type of a direction, but we also know that there are things we can do and

there are things that are happening that

should make us

not

view

that as a surety.

What we should do is continue to use my measures, our measures.

that show these things and deal with it

well.

And that's, by the way, what we should do, I think, is inject some understanding and worry into the situation, which we're doing now today.

I have a principle.

If you worry, you don't have to worry.

And if you don't worry, you need to worry.

Because if you worry, then you will take care of the things that you're worrying about.

I agree.

And we have the capacity today.

to deal with all of these things if the parties involved can worry enough and rise above their self-interests to be able to deal with them well.

That's a reality.

There's still choice.

However, I agree with what you said.

It's not likely.

And then there are possibilities.

You know, what does AI do?

What do the other things do?

Okay, so the answer to the last part of your question is what does a person do?

Okay.

I think what a person

does is, first of all, they know how to diversify well.

In other words, I'd say whatever success I've had in life has been more due to my knowing how to deal with what I don't know than anything I know.

And so for that reason, I would say you don't want to concentrate bets.

You want to have certain proper diversification of your bets.

That's a whole other subject.

One of the aspects of that is, yes, you do want to have a certain amount of gold in your portfolio or the equivalent of an alternative money, but not so much that it's your big dominant bet, okay?

But it diversifies your portfolio in an effective way because if the things we're talking about happen,

it also will mean that the other assets in your portfolio that you're holding, which won't do well,

will be protected by that position.

So you can structure your portfolio well.

Now, that's a whole other session to discuss, you know, how to structure a portfolio that's well diversified in many things.

And I would say

very importantly is, you know, what is money as a storehold of wealth?

What money do we have as a storeholder wealth?

And give consideration to that.

And how do you protect yourself to have a real after-tax return?

As for young people who are just sort of starting their careers right now, I would like to get your advice.

I mean, you are one of the great legendary investors of our time, but also a founder.

I mean, you started Bridgewater, you built it into the largest hedge fund in the world.

And it's a very interesting time for young people right now.

You mentioned the AI and how technology is impacting us.

Just a new study that we've been looking at, which I will just read off for you right here.

Entry-level workers aged 22 to 25 in occupations most exposed to AI have seen a 13% relative decline in employment since 2022.

So basically, young people who are entering the workforce right now,

they are losing their jobs to AI more than anyone else.

I'm just wondering what your advice to those people would be, and what would your advice be to young people who are starting their careers in general right now?

There's a polarity that exists

where

if you're among the best and the brightest, nothing matters other than your talents.

To be successful, any business, those with the most amount of money, their power is not even in the amount of money they have.

Their power is in identifying.

the most talented, capable people and enabling them.

Because think about where all this stuff has come from.

There was no NVIDIA.

There was no any of this.

Okay.

That all came from talented people enabled.

Okay.

So you want to, and it's really 1% of the population, 3 million people out of a country of 330 million people.

There was really like that 1%.

If you're in that 1% or even the 10% that's around them, that you can

do things together and take full advantage of intelligence and capabilities.

Do everything you can to be close to them or be part of that, because that is where

all things could happen, including how to navigate the world we're talking in.

You know, you can navigate it because it's not happening everywhere.

Not all countries are going to be at war.

Not all countries are going to have this.

There'll be places and things to do in all of those environments.

And so be able to be intelligent and be around those who are doing those things.

Take full advantage of AI.

Wow.

It can answer almost any of your questions and so on, but you have to do it well.

It sounds like you believe that the success of Bridgewater, or at least Bridgewater's greatest edge, was you recruited a great team.

Yeah, people, culture.

But, and then one other thing.

Every decision that I made,

I always thought, what were the criteria for making that decision?

And I wrote them down as principles.

I've written literally like thousands of principles.

And then I had them put into computer code.

And then I tested them back to see how they would have worked in the past.

So

I'm executing a game plan.

And so I've been doing AI in its various forms, but to be able to use that power too.

So I have experienced it.

Yes, who you're around, people and culture, that's destiny.

Meaningful work and meaningful relationships where

you're on a mission to be the best with people who are on that mission with you and you have the meaningful relationships.

But to do that, to achieve the highest level of excellence, and then, yes, use the AI.

So

what are you up to in the next 24 months?

What do you want to accomplish professionally and personally?

What are you focused on?

I'm at a stage in my life where I want to pass along whatever I've learned and is a benefit to others.

I'm 76, so I want to pass along whatever I have that could be a benefit to others.

That's everything that I'm doing.

That's why I wrote the book about the mechanics of the debt so people could study the mechanics.

I love playing my investment game.

I'm now doing it for my family office and that.

And then I'm making a platform for that everybody can do that sort of thing.

That would be my aspiration.

That's what I'd like to accomplish in the next 24 months.

And of course,

family, grandkids, savoring life.

I hear you, brother.

Ray Dalio is founder of Bridgewater Associates and ran it for most of its 50 years, building it into the largest hedge fund in the world.

He is a long-running New York Times best-selling author of several books, including his most recent work, How Countries Go Broke, The Big Cycle.

He received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1973 and has been married to his wife, Barbara, for 46 years and has three grown sons and seven grandchildren.

He is an active philanthropist.

He joins us from, where are you, Ray?

In Greenwich, Connecticut now.

Nice.

Well, we always, I think you're now a four-time guest.

On your fifth, you get a jacket.

So we'll have you back soon.

Oh, yeah.

Of course, for that.

What a thrill, right?

Ray, really appreciate your time and

good that you're getting into good trouble.

Right.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

That was great.

Thank you, Ray.

Scott, what'd you think?

Well,

you know, by virtue of the fact he's been on four times, we obviously think a lot of Ray and his accomplishments speak for himself, but I think he's very civic-minded.

I like how he grounds, you know, he tries to build frameworks, kind of the five influences.

I always enjoy hearing from him, trying to figure out how we move to the

action part of the program.

He has so many resources and such a big platform.

Could Ray potentially put forward

bills and initiatives or ballot initiatives?

Could he find 30 moderate candidates and quite frankly, just bankroll him the way Peter Thiel has?

I mean, what we need is we need a Peter Thiel that looks like and sounds like and behaves like Ray Dalio.

I've agreed with his concerns for many years.

One thing that I did find interesting, and I kind of get it because I think that he wants to,

I think he wants to make things happen.

And he, I think he probably believes that he needs to be sort of friends-ish with both sides.

But it was interesting to me that, you know, he said, I don't, we don't want to be evocative.

We don't want to say things that would be, that was the word he used, evocative.

And I don't know, I just find that

notable that Ray,

I think, is doing a lot of work to explain the actions of the administration.

And again, fair enough, if you want to get stuff done, you can't just go around alienating everyone and making people your enemy.

But he was certainly doing a lot of work to steel man that side.

I mean, the notion that the big, beautiful bill here's the argument as to why it could actually

bring down the deficit to me just

doesn't hold water at all.

And who knows?

Maybe he does think that it does have merit.

I don't really buy it.

And I think it's notable that he's putting in that work

probably to

stay friends.

I hope he doesn't get mad at me for saying that, but that's my read on it.

I think it's an accurate depiction.

And he kind of comes across as very statesmanlike.

I just, my view is, and again, I don't know if this is my anger talking.

I think the reaching across the aisle just hasn't worked.

And trying to understand the other side and what Trump voters are thinking and what the rationale is, and what if things go right.

I just don't think it's working.

And it's not, and by the way, it's not, as far as I can tell, it's never reciprocated.

So it's like, look, this is, war is the wrong word, but this is a conflict and battle lines have been drawn.

There is a vision of America that is shared by most Democrats and what I would argue is most traditional Republicans.

This is no longer a nation controlled by the Republican Party.

It's controlled by a MAGA movement.

And in some ways, it's a greater insult or more contrary to traditional Republican ideals.

Keep in mind, the initial founding fathers and the Constitution

were largely sort of what you would call traditional Republican ideals, making sure there were checks and balances, the government couldn't move too fast, the government couldn't intervene too much, that small government by virtue of three co-equal branches of government.

From a purely theoretical or constitutional standpoint, what's going on here is more of an insult and more contrary to Republican Republican ideals and Democratic ideals.

And it feels to me that we aren't going to have moral clarity around what has happened here, the violation of the Constitution, the weaponization of the Department of Justice, the violation of people's rights, the shipping of innocent people to black sites, the incredible

absolute first time in history we've been removing people's rights, the grift, the corruption.

I think there needs to be more clarity about this, and I think that these people need to pay a price.

And I'm not one of these people as I lock them up.

But I think the level of criminality here has been normalized.

And that we aren't going to get back to a sense of great institutions and a more resilient society and economy until we reconcile that.

I don't think it's trying to understand them or reaching across the aisle and feeling their pain.

Fuck that.

This is war.

And I use that word.

This is war.

At a certain point, we can do everything we can to try to understand their argument, but at a certain point, at a certain point, it just looks like lying.

I mean,

I do not believe that any of the policies that we have seen enacted in 2025 have been any attempt to reduce the deficit and to reduce the national debt.

There is nothing that has been done that would indicate to me that that is a priority or of any interest or of any meaning to this administration.

And to be clear, they said it was.

So we can try to explain away and try to figure out how to justify, oh, maybe they, if you look about it, look at it from this angle, maybe that makes sense.

Or you could just conclude, they lied.

They lied to get votes.

And that's where I land on this.

And I'd be interested to know what

Ray really thinks.

Maybe it is what he really thinks.

I just, I was a little skeptical.

I wonder if this is the price we pay for something you said really struck me when that was 60% of U.S.

adults can't read at a sixth grade level.

I mean, have we not purposely created a populace that are...

It cracks me up when elected officials say, you know, but the American public are smart.

No, they're not.

No, they're not.

The average American can't read above.

I like to believe that America is smart, but maybe you're right.

I think we're innovative and I think we're hardworking.

But I'm not sure if the average American can't read above a sixth grade level, I think it would be difficult to

call us smart.

We'll get to the bottom of this.

Something's afoot.

I don't want to get to the bottom.

I want to get to the other side.

What's on the other side, and I'm ready.

All right.

This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.

Our research team is Dan Shallan, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen O'Donoghue, and Mia Silverio.

Drew Burroughs is our technical director, and Catherine Dylan is our executive producer.

Thank you for listening to Profit Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday.

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