What exactly do you think he's saying?
Trump is Hitler
Ray Dalio points out the obvious
It All Has Happened Before for the Same Reasons
Ray DalioView attachment 209133
Ray Dalio
Founder of Bridgewater Associates
Published Sep 17, 2025
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For me, watching the news feels like watching a contemporary version of a movie that I’ve seen many times before. While the details change—the specific leaders, clothes, technologies, and stories aren’t identical—the basic story that is now unfolding and the cause/effect relationships that are driving it are the same as what I’ve seen many times in history (most recently the 1930s) and are laid out in detail in my book and video, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order.
Because seeing things this way has brought me great benefits and because I’m now at a stage in my life where I want to pass along to others what I see that might help them, I am sharing how I see what’s going on through that lens.
What follows are all things I have recently seen in the news that I haven’t seen through most of my lifetime but that I have seen many times before in my study of history. These events are all following my Big Cycle template that points toward breakdowns in monetary, political, and geopolitical orders.
So here is what I’ve watched in the news and how I saw it:
- The passage by the central government of the world’s leading reserve currency country, which is heavily indebted, of a budget bill that will produce big deficits that will require large bond sales and big increases in debt service payments, which will most likely be dealt with by the central bank pushing real interest rates down and monetizing its debt—increasing the risk to fiat money and debt denominated in it.
- The imposition of relatively large tariffs for both economic and geopolitical reasons in an attempt to make the country more competitive, bring in tax revenue, and use trade as a weapon against opposing countries.
- Moves by the country’s leader to increase his control over the central bank.
- Moves by the country’s leader to gain control over both the political system and his political opponents that he believes are ruining the country, leading to conflict between those of the hard right and those of the hard left.
- Moves by both the rightist (Republican) and leftist (Democratic) sides in a democracy to influence the elections to come out in their favor via redistricting initiatives (by Republicans in Texas and Democrats in California) rather than through representative democracy.
- The deployment of the National Guard in cities that have social disorder and political opposition to the leader’s policies.
- The shooting, martyrizing, and eulogizing of a political figure (Charlie Kirk) in a country where there is a lot of gun violence and increasing political violence.
- Leaders from a group of rival powers (China, Russia, India, North Korea, Iran) gathering in meetings and for a military parade to talk about and display their powers to challenge the leading world power and its world order.
- The incursion (by Russian drones) into countries (Poland and then Romania) that are in an alliance with other major countries (NATO countries) requiring them to enter a war if an attacked member country triggers that action.
- The attack of a country at war (Israel) on its enemies who were being housed in a neutral sovereign country that was trying to help negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
- There are many more news items that I could cite that paint a picture that is inconsistent with what we have become used to in this world order since World War II but is very consistent with what has happened at other times in history, especially during prior breakdowns in monetary, political, and geopolitical orders (e.g., in the 1930s).
I have found that studying the cause/effect mechanics of history makes it possible to logically explain these cause/effect relationships because they are relatively clear. I have built my understandings of these relationships into tools and models/templates for seeing how history has transpired. Because the causes come before the effects, these models have worked well for me, and I can’t help but see things through that cause/effect lens. While I have other models that determine my day-by-day positioning in the markets, my Big Cycle template has been most important in determining my big, long-term positioning.
By the way, I agree with the idea that history rhymes rather than repeats exactly. That is because many situations are similar, but none are identical. I find that to understand the big things that are going on and where these big things are probably headed, it is most important to focus on the interactions of the big forces and not squint at the details or expect precision. I suggest that you do the same.
Because I have found my Big Cycle template to be invaluable in helping me do what I do, especially in doing my investing (e.g., owning gold and having other market positions that have done well), and because at this stage in my life I want to pass it along to others who find it helpful, I laid it out in detail in my books Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle.
Now, to help convey why what’s happening looks like a movie that I have seen many times before, I will very briefly explain my Big Cycle template, why it helps me bet on what will probably happen, and what the picture now looks like to me.
How the Big Cycle Works
As previously explained (so I won’t dwell on it here), the Big Cycle is mostly driven by five big forces that have repeatedly interacted in basically the same ways throughout time. Because these forces and their effects can be tracked, one can see them evolve just as a doctor can watch vital signs to see a patient’s condition evolve.
The five big forces are:
The Debt, Money, Economy Force: By most measures, the Big Debt Cycle is tracking the template that I laid out in my book How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle. Most importantly, we are now seeing that governments’ debt-service costs are very large and rising much faster than the amounts of money that governments are taking with taxes, so we are now seeing debt-service payments squeezing out spending at the same time that we are seeing the supply of debt increasing faster than the demand for it. Domestic politics and international geopolitics are now operating with these debt, money, and economic forces in ways that we haven’t seen though most of our lives but have seen in analogous times in history due to understandable cause/effect relationships.
Because I have seen the dynamics that are now driving things in over 50 cases in history, I understand what central banks and central governments have done when they were in analogous positions because it is logical for them to do such things. That’s what informs my view of what will probably happen—e.g., that there will probably be a lowering of real interest rates and a printing and devaluation of money to pay the debt back with cheaper money—and this view drives my bets. From studying history and seeing what is happening, I believe that big increases in debts and deficit spending are likely to continue because the American voting population won’t accept either higher taxes or lower benefits, and those who want to be elected don’t want to impose fiscal discipline on those whose votes they need.
For that reason (and for the other political and geopolitical reasons that I am about to touch on), I see that central bankers and investors have been shifting away from holding fiat currency debt as their dominant storehold of wealth reserves/savings and toward holding gold and other non-fiat currencies as their reserves/savings, which has been driving up the prices of gold, other hard currencies, and non-fiat currency storeholds of wealth. This is all logical to me. I also see that because of these circumstances, the leader of the heavily indebted country, in this case President Trump, wants to lower real interest rates, gain control over the central bank, and lean on foreign creditors to not sell their debt and to invest instead in his country. All these things have happened before during this stage in the Big Cycle.
The Domestic Political Force: The existing political order is also changing in unusual and dangerous ways that haven’t happened before in our lifetimes but that have happened many times in history and that are driven by understandable forces working in logical ways. More specifically, because there are large and growing gaps in wealth and values, we are now seeing extreme political splits between those of the hard right and the hard left, and we are seeing the rise of both populism of the right and populism of the left and win-at-all-cost fights between them. These forces are changing the domestic legal and political systems in ways that we haven’t seen before in our lifetimes, but which are similar to those that happened many times before for analogous reasons in the analogous stages of the Big Cycle, most recently in the 1930s.
These big changes are notable. For example, throughout most of the post-World War II period, US leaders were expected to operate by laws within a system that was designed to be run with checks and balances, broad representation of the country’s diverse perspectives, and compromises that work for the whole rather than for either side. Now, leaders are no longer willing to do that because they are in win-at-all-cost fights and are working on changing the system for their side to win. That is reflected in the recent news about people in government jobs being hired or fired based on their political alignment, the ways voting districts are being gerrymandered, and the ways the Supreme Court, Congress, and the tripartite checks-and-balances system are now working. These are all very different from what we are used to yet are both analogous to prior times in history and logical given the existing circumstances.
Similarly, the news about the president ordering National Guard troops into major cities that are in disorder and that are run by the president’s political opposition is inconsistent with what we have become used to but consistent with what we have seen in the past and what is typical in this phase of the classic Big Cycle. All this is logical when a country is in a mess in many ways and when there are great differences in wealth, values, and approaches (i.e., right versus left), because those on different sides want strong leaders to take charge to fix the mess and win at all costs. Throughout history, this kind of fighting has weakened democracies and led to great conflicts that changed the domestic political order. Violence between the sides that leads to killings is a big red flag that typically signals a big fight and big disruptive changes, so the killing of Charlie Kirk naturally triggers memories of historical cases of political violence. While there have been some other recent examples of left/right politically motivated, rich/poor class motivated, religiously motivated, and ethnically motivated acts of violence, I am not yet ready to conclude that there will be a significant-enough number of these to be systematically disrupting. Still, I am watching this closely because an increase in this kind of violence is a reliable leading indicator of periods of great disruption.
The International Geopolitical Force: It should now be obvious that the world order is changing from a US-led multilateral order, with multilateral institutions and agreements playing important roles in shaping how the world works, to a much more unilateral order in which the United States and its allies are on one side and China and its allies are on the other side. We can now see that these great powers are engaging in the kinds of classic economic, trade, technological, and capital wars that have typically preceded military wars. And we can see that these developments are following the classic international geopolitical cycle. The recent gathering in Beijing included Xi of China, Putin of Russia, Modi of India, Kim of North Korea, Pezeshkian of Iran, and other US-opposing or “non-aligned” leaders and was followed by a big military parade that followed President Trump’s military parade earlier this year. These events look more like the classic saber-rattling that we have seen many times before in analogous historical periods in the Big Cycle than what we are used to seeing in the post-1945 world order. The recent Russian drone incursion into Poland that I touched on earlier and the recent Israeli attack on the Hamas headquarters in Doha were notable and concerning crossings of red lines.
The Force of Nature: Throughout history, droughts, floods, and pandemics have killed more people and toppled more orders than any of the previously mentioned forces. It should be obvious that it is now a very big force that will have big economic, political, and geopolitical impacts that won’t be good.
Humankind’s Learning and the Creation of New Technologies: AI and quantum computing will both be huge forces and will be used for both great and terrible purposes. Perhaps it will greatly increase learning and productivity to help mitigate the other issues, or perhaps it will exacerbate them. While nobody can predict how much of each will happen, we certainly can monitor and ride the changes. I believe that great fortunes will be made in the platforms that enable great usage of these technologies as well as by the smart users of them who raise profits and productivity a lot, so I am investing in both.
To reiterate, while these Big Cycles are no more preordained than people’s life cycles, they do unfold logically and, like the progressions of human life cycles and diseases, can be monitored and measured to judge the health of the systems and their prognoses. In Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order and my more recent book, How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle, I explain the cause/effect mechanics, the current and past conditions and how and why they changed, and the limited options that currently exist under these circumstances. Understanding these Big Cycle linkages isn’t just valuable for investors; it can also help leaders, policy-makers, and citizens understand what is likely to come next if events unfold as they typically do, which can lead to them steering things in ways that avoid the worst outcomes. For those interested, I’m sharing a chapter from my latest book with a distilled version of the Overall Big Cycle, which describes this Big Cycle and what is now happening in a 10-minute read. You can go here to read a quick 5-minute summary of the full book, which explains my straightforward 3-part 3% solution for getting the US debt issue stabilized.
There is one thing that is obvious on this thread, there are plenty of right wjng and left wing nut jobs to go around.
Just follow the back slapping like colums. Lol it's hillarious.
Well the thing is, the U.S has been in decline since they started globalisation and the West followed suit, until now no one has addressed the issue.Oh yeah, we all do it.
Like I said, middle America will sort it out sooner or later.
Hopefully sooner.
Maybe, but if the whole tree falls over, has anything been gained?Whether you love him or hate him, Trump is the only one who has shaken the tree, the status quo has been disrupted and it needed to be.
Yes, because in your reality your ABC employs both Jimmy Kimmel and John Lyons.Back to Trump reality land. The place where whatever The Sun God Decrees .. becomes real. And his followers duly agree.
Trump Applauds ABC for Axing Kimmel, Tells Them To Sack That Pesky Four Corners Guy Next
There is one thing that is obvious on this thread, there are plenty of right wing and left wing nut jobs to go around.
Just follow the back slapping like colums. Lol it's hillarious.
How people can get so polorised is amazing, but it isn't confined to just this thread, the same people are just as invested in many threads, obviously it is a common personality trait. Lol
As usual, showing your class, or lack thereof, giving everyone a spray.Is that like franking credits….. ouch.
You are totally correct as always some deal in facts the rest belong to a Cult that will accept anything but social equity and justice.
They believe some how very wealthy powerful men or the likes of Gina standing on the back of a truck have their backs.
You know defending their freedums like attacking trans genders or any other minority group that lack power.
Of course you can just cheer along perhaps do a group hug. Nod, wink…
The tree was going to fall over anyway, that was inevitable on the trajectory that it was going, whether this stops the tree falling over remains to be seen.Maybe, but if the whole tree falls over, has anything been gained?
Wow !! That is so SO good Antir nator. Really cannot see any other post on ASF beating that for POTY.Yes, because in your reality your ABC employs both Jimmy Kimmel and John Lyons.
We now have hard evidence that you are a complete fraud because you don't even know basic facts. Disney/ABC and the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) are not the same organisation.
Jimmy Kimmel is a Bob Eiger problem, go harass him.
John Lyons is a Kim Williams problem, go harass him.
View attachment 209181
Apparently facts can hurt your feelings.Wow !! That is so SO good Antir nator. Really cannot see any other post on ASF beating that for POTY.
Out of interest have you ever visited The Shovel website ?
How about having a peek. Could be useful.
The Shovel — News you can believe in
The Shovel is an Australian satirical comedy news website – a bit like the Daily Mail really, just with longer words.theshovel.com.au
As usual, showing your class, or lack thereof, giving everyone a spray.
Your showing your nasty side. Nod wink lol
Apparently facts can hurt your feelings.
Ridicule is not Satire. But go ahead ridiculing grief and murder. Your ghoulish sense of humour is not winning any awards. Hope you enjoy gnawing on the bones of Charlie Kirk.Apparently your totally oblivious to facts and certainly havn't the faintest clue about Satire.
Yes it is exceptionally hard to wrote anything satirical about Donald Trump because in the real world one is hard pressed to spot the difference. But lets give The Shovel another chance shall we and see if you can spot the Satire in the story this time ?
Trump Delivers Touching Eulogy for the First Amendment
I may be wrong but I think VC was actually trained to prevent people from being blown up by bombs and land mines but I'm sure he can speak for himself on that.VC was literally trained to kill people in war.
CK was welcoming and encouraging for gay people to be in his movement, if they held broader conservative values and was commenting on what would such people would be murdered in Gaza, plus the consequences of Hamas invading and butchering 1200 innocent folks.
That was the context the lefties ignore, while condoning murdering a family man whose only crime was to be a good conservative.
This is actually what is "gross".
What truth?I may be wrong but I think VC was actually trained to prevent people from being blown up by bombs and land mines but I'm sure he can speak for himself on that.
The point is, just because someone dies doesn't mean they suddenly become a saint. I'm sure you have said bad things about people you didn't like after their death. If you don't like the truth about him coming out , too bad.
I'll give his wife credit for saying at his funeral that she forgives his killer. That is real class, and may her God bless her.
Trump on the other hand showed his (lack of) class by saying he hates his enemies. So what do the Christians here think about that?
Loving your enemies is gift that Jesus gave to all nations that adopt Christian values. Hating your enemies is standard human practice.Trump on the other hand showed his (lack of) class by saying he hates his enemies. So what do the Christians here think about that?
By his own word unless you are saying the "joke" about throwing gays off talll buildings in Gaza was faked?What truth?
Let's see what you have and by whose virtue you are comparing him?
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