Ray Dalio never misses an opportunity to cut to the chase. On Wednesday at Davos, speaking to Kamal Ahmed, Fortune’s executive editorial director for the U.K. and Europe, he had a blunt assessment of the landscape leaders and CEOs are facing at the moment. “What always scares me is the lack of realism [among leaders],” he said as he reeled off the historic economic, environmental, and political threats the world is grappling with. “Will law prevail? Everyone is having to deal with that question.”
When it comes to the U.S. economy, Dalio has long been a vocal critic of the rapidly rising national debt, which now stands at $38 billion. He said the crisis is so great that we are now dealing with the “breakdown of the monetary order,” and we face a terrible choice: “Do you print money or do you let a debt crisis happen?”
He said recently in another interview: “My grandchildren and great-grandchildren not yet born, are going to be paying off this debt in devalued dollars.” He has described a paralysis in Washington in which policymakers assume the bond market will not collapse, and bond traders assume Congress will act before a crisis becomes irreversible. When referring to the debt crisis, Dalio has often referenced Ernest Hemingway’s famous line about how bankruptcy happens: something that moves slowly till it happens all at once.
Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, but has completely exited the firm, selling his stake and leaving the board last year. Since 2023, Bridgewater has been run by Nir Bar Dea; in 2025, its Pure Alpha II macro fund returned 34%, a huge jump from the more lackluster performance between 2012 and 2024.
Dalio has long been a student of history and said during an interview with Fortune that he’s looking back over 500 years to try to make sense of today and see what’s coming. “The reason I anticipated the 2008 financial crisis is that I studied the 1930s. The same thing happens over and over again; it’s like watching a movie for me,” he said.
Trump’s Davos address
Dalio’s comments came shortly after President Trump’s address, in which he declared he would not use force to take over Greenland, and offered Silicon Valley a deal: If they build their own nuclear power plants to fuel AI, their plans would be fast-tracked toward approval in just three weeks. Several leaders at Fortune’s USA House event noted that they felt Trump’s speech lowered the temperature, which had been spiking in recent weeks.
Though Dalio has consistently been harshly critical of America’s management of government finances, he has been supportive of other Trump initiatives. In December, Dalio and his wife announced they would donate $75 million following a call from President Trump for the nation’s business leaders to donate to his program of “Trump Accounts.” The Dalios said they would commit $250 to 300,000 children under 10 in Connecticut living in zip codes with median incomes below $150,000. “I have been fortunate to live the American Dream. At an early age, I was exposed to the stock market, and it changed my life,” he said in a statement. He said he sees the accounts as a way to put kids on a path toward financial independence.
