From Newsweek,
Hedge fund manager and billionaire Ray Dalio has warned that the U.S. may be entering a new kind of “civil war” amid rising inequality and debt, as well as a breakdown in the global geopolitical order.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV which aired this week, the founder of Bridgewater Associates said that the forces which “shape the world” were all now being disrupted, and that America served as a prime example of this.
As time goes on, I’m less and less interested in “the forces which shape the world.” But in the civil war angle, Dalio points to the rising national debt ($38 trillion) and the “internal conflicts of wealth and how things should be run.”
Speak for yourself. Dalio talks of “cycles of history” and he may well have come to the correct conclusion based on an irrelevant analysis.
America appears to be divided between two roughly equal in size camps: those who think government should exist to “redistribute” wealth and make everyone “equal” and those who think government should exist to create the conditions for the creation of wealth.
In broad terms, the former is how we got $38 trillion in debt and the latter is how we reached the position of perceived wealth inequality.
Personally, the mere existence of billionaires bothers me not at all. If Dalio feels guilty about his wealth, he can give it away.
Or, perhaps he just needs to wait a few days. From the New York Post,
Wall Street may be heading toward a 1929-style stock market crash — as inflated share prices, speculative bubbles and eroding financial safeguards feel eerily similar to the eve of the Great Depression, according to a financial journalist.
Andrew Ross Sorkin, who co-hosts CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and founded the New York Times’ DealBook newsletter, told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that he was “anxious” about the markets possibly being on the verge of a catastrophic meltdown.
As the man once sang,
When Black Friday comes
I’ll stand down by the door
And catch the gray men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor
