“To be successful, we need everyone to think independently and work through disagreement to decide what’s best.”
–Ray Dalio
April 15, 2025 — Poor Kristen Welker.
Misguided by her network’s thirst for clickable doom, she missed a golden chance — one Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Capital, called “a huge opportunity to get things right.”
Instead, what aired on NBC’s Meet the Press was a headline-friendly mash-up of economic jitters and tariff tantrums.
It was tailor-made to write the headline the mainstream media needed to scare the pants off viewers just long enough to sell ad slots between electric vehicles and weight-loss drugs.
What it wasn’t was a good-faith attempt to understand what Dalio was actually saying.
Dalio wasn’t just talking about Trump’s tariffs. He was trying to explain the breakdown of the entire global monetary system.
Granted, that’s tough to do in thirty-second segments. But that’s why he’s written the book he’s on tour promoting, How Countries Go Broke, part of his insanely researched and thoroughly documented Principles series.
And make no mistake. Dalio sees a generational shift underway. A shift as big — if not bigger — than the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944 that pegged global currencies to the dollar, which in turn was pegged to gold.
That system, by the way, died a Nixonian death in 1971, and we’ve been floating on the fumes of trust and Treasury auctions ever since. “We are going to change the monetary order,” Dalio warned.
And he’s not wrong.
Yet Kristen Welker — perhaps echoing the whispers of a producer desperately looking for a bite-sized panic button — kept asking versions of the same question: “So, is this going to be a recession? Is it a depression? How scared should our audience be?”
To which Dalio — clearly trying to be constructive — kept reiterating the same point: this isn’t about just tariffs, or even Trump. It’s about the structure of the monetary system.
The value of the money itself.
And it’s failing. Fast.
Imagine trying to explain the collapse of the Roman Empire to someone who only wants to talk about the price of bread. That’s what Dalio faced.
He brought up historical cycles, debt accumulation, geopolitical instability, the rise of China, and the fraying threads of American internal order. The man invoked the 1930s, not lightly.
And what did Kristen do? “But could it be as bad as a depression? What’s your biggest fear?” That’s like asking someone about a heart attack while they’re trying to explain cholesterol.
Dalio’s point — echoing a theme we’ve explored extensively in Empire of Debt — is that we’re nearing the end of a long-term debt cycle.
The consequences go far beyond GDP prints and Fed statements. If handled poorly, he said, the value of money itself will be questioned.
Think inflation.
Think debt monetization.
Think Weimar with smartphones. But also, if handled well — and this is where Dalio was surprisingly hopeful — we could see a realignment. A return to balanced trade. A more stable dollar. Low taxes and regulation.
The system could be rebuilt. That was the crux. Not clickbait. But nation-saving insight. And a realistic path to do so, not just vague statements about a “Golden Age.”
Now, imagine you’re a sharp eighth grader. You’ve just learned about the U.S. Constitution, maybe even heard of the gold standard. And now you’re watching the adults on TV, supposedly the experts, ignore a man telling them: “Hey, our system is breaking. But we can fix it.”
Instead, Welker (or her producers) prefer that she keep yelling at viewers.
“But is it a depression? Will it be worse than 2008? Please, tell us it’s worse!” That, kid, is how media today works. We don’t educate. We scare. We don’t seek wisdom. We extract keywords for Google indexing. We keep eyeballs on screen through the next commercial break. Just business.
Dalio tried to hand them a compass. NBC wanted a siren.
There’s a phrase we’ve used often in The Grey Swan: “These aren’t threats you need to fear — if you understand them.”
Dalio understands. What he outlined — shifting trade balances, debt-based instability, and cyclical geopolitical power transitions — isn’t new. We’ve seen it before.
In the 1930s. In the 1970s. And now again. But the solution isn’t panic. It’s understanding. The real danger isn’t a recession. It’s a loss of confidence in money itself. That’s why it’s important to own some gold – a view that Ray Dalio holds as well as we do.
But the real opportunity is to rebuild that confidence before the dollar turns into a trivia question.
NBC missed that story. You don’t have to.
—Addison Wiggin
Grey Swan
P.S. Reader Dom C. has a similar probing request for us, too.
“I admire your newsletters,” Dom writes, “but often feel you are leaving out the most important concepts to ignite the imagination to provoke people to come up with an evolutionary system that can be truly transformative.
“The present system has institutionalized a Master > Servant form of government.
“In a truly Democratic system, I believe we elect a leader as a mentor and a good pastor. This means that while privileges can be withdrawn, punishment should not be a substitute for an alternative point of view.
“There are many different states of mind, and to cull only one type, such as the obedient type, does not benefit us in the long run. Humans are all different by design. We all land on this planet by the same route called “physical reproduction,” but our brains are far from being identical.
“So! Does anyone have the courage and curiosity to delve in this new fork of the untraveled road?”
P.P.S: For paid members, we have our latest Grey Swan Live! this Thursday, April 17, at 11 a.m. ET.
This week, we’ll dive into the gold rally and what it signals for global finance with Jason Cozens, CEO of GlintPay.com.
Jason is also on the front lines of a domestic effort to restore “constitutional” gold at the U.S. state level. Join us. We’ll explain what all that means! This one matters.
As always, your cheerful reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.
