#976 - Ray Dalio - The Changing World Order: How Countries Go Broke

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ray Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, billionaire investor, philanthropist and an author. How do countries actually go broke? In a world of abundance, it’s easy to think the good times will last. But with global debt soaring, we may be nearing an unprecedented economic reckoning. History shows these cycles repeat; the question is, can we escape collapse and find a path to prosperity before it’s too late? Expect to learn why Ray got interested in how and why countries go broke, how money and debt actually work, the 5 major forces that shaped history, how the debt cycle works to make the rich richer, how politics impact they global world order, what AI will do to disrupt the world as we know it, what most people get wrong about how countries actually fall apart, and much more… Sponsors: See me on tour in America: ⁠https://chriswilliamson.live⁠ See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Timestamps: (0:00) Moving from Macro Investing to Predicting Currency Fluctuations (8:00) The Five Big Forces (15:35) How Does the Debt Cycle Work? (22:39) What Does It Mean for a Country to Not Pay Its Debts? (29:24) To What Extent Do Economic Cycles Affect Politics? (38:32) Why are Our Policies So Push and Pull? (43:29) We're On the Brink of an Economic Downturn (48:08) How Can We Understand the External Geo-Political Order? (53:26) How China’s Ascension Relates to the First Two World Orders (57:16) What Role Does Active Nature Have in the Modern World? (01:02:03) The Predicted Impact of AI (01:08:25) Is Anyone Safe From AI? (01:13:15) Are Financial Cycles Worse Than Kinetic Wars? (01:21:03) Is Ray Onto Something? (01:23:56) Find Out More About Ray Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	60 years of global macro investing. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, Bridgewater just celebrated its 50th
0:09.5	year and I just celebrated passing it along. So yeah, thank you. Yeah. Why, after all that time,
0:17.2	why did you get interested in a changing world order and how countries go broke?
0:22.8	Like, why does a global macro investor do that?
0:26.6	Well, I'll tell you a story.
0:30.8	When I was between college and Harvard Business School in 1971, I was clerking on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
0:41.9	And on August 15th, 1971, President Nixon gets on the television and he says,
0:49.7	you know, our promises to allow you to turn in those dollars for gold, well, we're not going to stick to them.
0:56.1	That wasn't his wording exactly. But money as we knew it, which was gold, and the money as we now know it,
1:06.3	which is fiat money, was like checks. He didn't, we weren't going to get our money.
1:13.5	And so I walked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange the next morning,
1:17.1	clerking, and I figured the market would be down a lot,
1:20.6	and it turned out it was up a lot.
1:24.2	And I hadn't been through a devaluation before,
1:26.6	so I studied history, And I found out that on
1:31.3	March 15th, or I think it was March 3rd, 1933, Roosevelt did the exact same thing on the radio,
1:41.6	and I studied it. And as a result of studying that, I understood the mechanics
1:47.4	of that, why the devaluation had that kind of effect. And I studied the Great Depression because
1:52.3	what I learned was that it may not have happened in my lifetime before these important things,
1:59.5	but I need to understand them. So I studied the Great
2:01.6	Depression, and that allowed me to make a lot of money and do very well in anticipating the 2008
2:08.8	financial crisis and then to also the European debt crisis from 2010 to 2015.
	...

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