Success IS NOT What you Think it Will Be

2025-07-28

When great powers rise throughout history, they generally do so for the same reasons. These successful new orders are typically started by powerful revolutionary leaders doing four things:

1) Winning power by gaining more support than their opposition
2) Consolidating power by converting, weakening, or eliminating that opposition
3) Establishing systems and institutions that make the country work well
4) Creating systems that pick successors well over several generations

#principles #raydalio #history #empire

2025-07-14

I’m very happy to learn that my new book, How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle was selected by @barnesandnoble as one of their Best Business Books of the year.

The book conveys what I’ve learned over the past 50 years as a macro investor about the mechanics of how countries go broke — and what that means for the US today.

I hope you’ll read it and learn about it so that you understand what we’re dealing with, and what you can do to navigate the interesting times ahead.

2025-06-26

It’s critical that we bring our deficits down — and soon.

Since one man’s debts are another man’s assets, debt problems pass through the system very quickly.

When there’s a lot of debt, like there is today, it has to be sold — and we’re now at a point where there aren’t enough buyers for that debt.

Historically, when that happens, bad things follow. So we need to get this problem under control and we need to do it fast.