A Legendary Investor on How to Prevent America’s Coming ‘Heart Attack’
5/7/202651 min
A stalemated war. Fractured alliances. A rival waiting in the wings. It feels to me that we’re having an “end of the American empire” moment. My guest this week, Ray Dalio, is an unlikely prophet of doom — the billionaire Bridgewater investor conquered Wall Street by studying history and mastering global trends. He foresaw the 2008 financial crisis,and these days he’s warning that the U.S. is repeating the patterns that ended great empires of the past.
- 0:00 - Intro
- 01:24 - The rise and fall of empires through big cycles
- 08:35 - Geopolitical tensions: China, Iran and the Suez Canal
- 14:27 - Fiat currency or gold?
- 24:19 - America’s coming ‘heart attack’
- 30:37 - Acts of nature, A.I. and technology
- 43:37 - ‘Could we have a Japanese future?’
(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsEzra Klein· Soundbite0:01
If you find yourself bewildered by this moment where there's so much reason for despair and so much reason to hope all at the same time, let me say I hear you. I'm Ezra Klein from New York Times Opinion, host of The Ezra Klein Show. And for me, the best way to beat back that bewildered feeling is to talk it out with the people who have ideas and frameworks for making sense of it. There is going to be plenty to talk about. You can find The Ezra Klein Show wherever you get your podcasts.
Ross Douthat· Host0:27
[gentle music] From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times. [upbeat music] I feel like lately we've been having a kind of end-of-the-American-empire moment. In part, I think it's just the stalemated war in Iran. In part, it's just the strain that Donald Trump is putting on American alliances. And in part, I think it's a sense that our biggest rival, China, is sitting back, biding its time, and waiting for the collapse. My guest this week has been on this beat for a while now, and he has a grand theory of history that predicts that America is headed for a fall. He's kind of an unlikely Cassandra.