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Dalio, Biggest Hedge Fund Manager: "developed world has reached its debt limit"

by rajpaul on 10/24/11, 1:20 PM with 45 comments

• by billybob on 10/24/11, 3:54 PM

  TL;DR:

  "Imagine you earned $100,000 a year and you didn`t have any debt. You can go to a bank and borrow $10,000 a year. You can spend, therefore, $110 a year. When you spend $110,000 a year, somebody else earns $110,000 and they can go to a bank and there`s a self-reinforcing process in which your debt rises in relationship to your income.

  And that goes on for a long time and that goes on for 50 or 75 years through history. We`ve had 50, 75-year cycles and then you reach a point where you can`t anymore get more debt and the process starts to change."

• by JimboOmega on 10/24/11, 2:40 PM

  The problem he refers to is a classic deflationary scenario. Everybody saves money (to pay off debts, or etc). Money becomes scarcer, since nobody can borrow it (banks are deleveraging as well), and people aren't spending it.

  The classic solution is to expand the money supply to get things moving again, which is the point of QE, etc. Creating inflation lessens the value of debt in real terms, too.

  Not at all a new thought, in this situation or others. See wiki on debt deflation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_deflation

• by latch on 10/24/11, 3:18 PM

  "I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are."

  If you want to get better at anything, the first thing you do is acknowledge that you can do better. Having recently left the investment banking world, you might be surprised how many average-at-best developers think they have no room for improvement.

  EGO IS DEATH.

• by dshaw002 on 10/24/11, 2:13 PM

  He has a copy of his company's and his own personal management document, Principles, on his hedge fund's site. It's a really good and interesting read.

  http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...

• by trebor on 10/24/11, 2:21 PM

  Wow, that's the clearest explanation I've heard of how we got into this cycle. Good for Dalio being honest and clear!

• by FD3SA on 10/24/11, 9:41 PM

  "Ok. What`s depressing -- what`s depressing jobs is that the world supply and demand for labor has changed. In other words, there`s a lot more people working as China came on and India came on and they are competitive. There`s a world supply of labor has change -- has increased and technology has had an effect.

  So we`re in an interesting era because I think almost and if you think of a person as -- in a machine, an economic machine as being tool, a part of that economic machine the demand for labor has changed in a very profound way. It`s an interesting question. We might enter into a period in which we don`t need people as tools. So what does that mean?"

  So he is concerned about the breakdown of the Luddite fallacy. Interesting, considering he has everything to gain from promulgating the guarantee of infinite employment opportunities for average citizens. I believe this is a fair canary in the coal mine for the structural employment nightmare we shall face in the coming decades.

• by teyc on 10/25/11, 12:18 AM

  I don't think he is correct. Debt can be sustained as long as there are marginal returns to be had. The real problem is that the marginal returns are no longer there because energy prices have been increasing at the same pace. This suggests that energy availability to be the limiting factor.

  Once growth is throttled by expensive energy, the debt position of countries, companies and individuals start to look shaky. This is what is happening now. If companies are unable to increase their profitability, then there is less taxes to be collected, which means weaker governments, and a slower economy. This in turn affects an individual's ability to find and keep work, and service their debts.

• by Cushman on 10/24/11, 2:50 PM

  And whose fault is that, Mr. Hedge Fund Manager?