Ray Dalio on His Biggest Failure

2025-10-24

The way I see it, any serious effort to solve the debt crisis will likely come too late.

It’s a timing issue. 2026 is a midterm election year — politicians won’t want to take the painful steps needed to improve our economic picture: cutting spending, raising taxes, and the like.

Any sort of bipartisan effort that comes after will both take time and be unlikely to be effective, because those commissions generally don’t work very well in practice.

That’s what it looks like to me. I’m curious to hear if you see things similarly.
@TheProfGPod

2025-09-23

Gold is now the second largest reserve currency, behind the US dollar.

To understand why, you need to look at the history of fiat currencies (like the dollar) and hard currencies (like gold).

The way I see it, we’re currently facing a classic currency devaluation similar to what we saw in the 1970s or the 1930s. In both of those cases, fiat currencies around the world all went down together — and also went down in relationship to hard currencies, like gold.

If events today follow a similar pattern, that makes hard currencies an attractive asset to hold.

At least, that’s how it looks through my eyes. I’m curious to hear what you think.

You can watch the full conversation here: ?feature=shared

2025-08-20

One principle that I’ve really learned is “Pain + Reflect = Progress.”

2025-08-05

The U.S. dollar used to be backed by gold — and it’s not farfetched to think we may be headed there again in the future.

History shows us that the same cycles repeat time and time again. One such cycle is related to currency devaluation.

Once people start to lose trust in the fiat system, we see a specific cause and effect reaction occur.

1) Governments print a lot of money
2) They pay off the debt with the cheap money
3) Nobody wants to hold the devalued currency
4) Governments go back and link money to gold

Will this same pattern happen again? It’s hard to say, and it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. But it is conceivable.

2025-07-30

In an advanced economy, credit does more good than bad. But it’s important to remember that borrowing creates cycles — and if the cycle goes up, it eventually needs to come down.

I explain why this is particularly important today in my new book, How Countries Go Broke.

But if you’d like more context on how all of these pieces come together, I recommend you watch my 30-minute explainer “How the Economic Machine Works” here: &t=1444s

#principles #howcountriesgobroke #economics #credit

2025-06-09

If you study the patterns of history, you find interrelated cycles in which global economic and political orders rise and inevitably break down due to specific cause-effect relationships playing out through time.

In my research, I’ve found that when you have the combination of the monetary order breaking down — like a debt crisis — and the internal political order breaking down, you have a very serious situation.

I believe we are facing one of these inflection points today. With our current levels of prosperity, it can be difficult to see this happening in real-time. But when you step back and look at the mechanics, the broader picture begins to emerge.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss this perspective with the IMF. And for those who are interested, I dive into what these