The Economic Collapse No One Wants To Talk About - Ray Dalio

we're on the brink of war with China for various reasons I hope we make it to 2050. the demographics is as I describe it and by the way them losing doesn't make us winning so I think you're in the part of the cycle where you've had the tightening and the dominoes are beginning to fall and I think that that's going to produce more problems the most important thing is to have this basic well-diversified portfolio is important two years ago you made some predictions about the future for America and the global economy how accurate do you think you've been uncomfortably accurate given the whole picture you know um it's like watching the movie for over and over again um maybe I should explain uh for about 55 years I've been a global macro investor and I learned that many of the things that surprised me never happened in my lifetime before so when I would see certain things happen that were like that I would go back in history and study uh prior periods studying for example the Great Depression allowed us to anticipate the financial crisis in 2008 anyway there are three big things that I observed happening that didn't happen in our lifetimes but happened during the 1930 to 45 period and they are the creation of enormous amounts of debt and the printing of money to pay for those debts and it having its economic effects on inflation and growth the second is internal conflicts um over the largest wealth gaps we had since then values gaps and the rise of populism of the right and the left those conflicts again largest since that 1930 to 45 period and then the rise of a great power uh producing a great Powers conflict internationally um with the rise of China as a great power uh challenging the United States and uh with Russia so the great power conflict that also is the uh most that that's happened since uh the Great Depression so because those three things are happening now and um I didn't study them um I went back and I needed to study the Cycles these what's happened over longer periods of time so I studied the last 500 years because these big Cycles uh take about 75 years and give or take about 50. so um and um you know like the rise in decline of the British Empire the rising decline of the Dead and that Dynamic I shared um in the book and I also shared it in an animated video uh which is called the changing World Order um and that creates a path now it's not just because they repeat in this way but one can see the cause effect relationships that are happening and um so that has pretty much transpired according to script we can get into those pieces but I'd say those are the three main ones there were two others that had big effect that I paid more attention to um that I'll mention one was um acts of nature in the form of droughts floods and pandemics they were very disruptive when they happened killed more people and uh toppled more Empires and or Waters than others and then also of course over a period of time there's learning and producing new technologies that raises living standards you know it's raised per capita income life expectancy and so on and so for those five flat factors try transpire in ways that we've seen before to create this big cycle and it's uh if we can look at the cause effect relationships um that's what I want to pass along because I'm 74 years old and I'm in a phase in my life that I want to pass along the things that are of value and I think this is an important thing but yes it's transpiring according to script Cassandra yet again unfortunately what do you think is the likelihood of the Meltdown of the dollar is America going to be wiped out at some point soon I don't want um histrionics you know just I don't want to um overdo it and I also don't want to just jump to conclusions my goal here is to show people how the Machine Works the cause effect relationship so I'm going to answer your question by explaining certain things um the dollar is um is held by countries in the form of debt in other words when you say I'm holding the dollar um you're holding a dead instrument and when we have a a problem with the dead instrument a few problems with it holding that instruments um those problems are that first of all as a result of what the United States was in the world the largest trading country um the dominant Empire and so on there's been a a huge accumulation of dollar denominated debt and dollars therefore and there's also been um a lot of deficits that had to be funded which happens by selling dollar denominated debt which a lot of foreigners and Banks and others bought and so they have a lot of dollar denominated debt now um if you're a creditor meaning an owner of dollar denominated debt you need to have an interest rate that is high enough to the more than compensate you for inflation and so um the production now of a lot more debt and and them having a lot of debt and then also sanctions internationally which means freezing dollar denominated debt all have created a reduction in the demand for dollar denominated debt there's also you know concerns in the world about some of the things that are going on in the United States and that's reduced to that as a result of that um you're seeing more transactions take place in other currencies um and if they trade take place in other currencies then others want to save in those other currencies um because that's how they pay for it so if you want to save and what you pay for you save more in it and less in dollars and so that's the dynamic that is reducing the demand for dollars and dollar debt at the same time as the supply of it keeps coming because we have large deficits so the underlying value that those dollars uh represent isn't increasing but the number of dollars spread across that is yeah so that there's a supply demand issue that Supply demand issue by the way also exists in European currencies okay they have too much debt and their Finance the same way and Japanese currencies and so what you're seeing is the movement all that weight of money and debt is causing prices to go up inflation and that's also being worsened by the supply chain deteriorations that are due to the international conflict so for example um in case of let's say China and the United States um and other countries as they prepare for the possibility of War they want to be self-sufficient and so um as a result they work on being self-sufficient more than integrated and efficient and so um that Dynamic is playing an important role too what do you think the next few years have got in store for us um well um I'm going to take all three of those influences and answer it because they're all related the um there's a uh business cycle or a short-term debt cycle I call it um that you know sort of recession to recession and the way it works is you have a recession in Weak economy central banks um stimulate credit growth credit gives you buying power you go out and buy the economy picks up um and then that continues until you start to have inflation then they tighten monetary policy and then it uh and then the economy weakens and it goes into the next recession since 1945 when the New World Order began in other words we had the currency and also the American World Order beginning in that we've had 12 and a half of those Cycles we are they've typically last about seven years give or take about three and so we are now about halfway through this cycle in which they um you know you they did the stimulation inflation Rises they tighten monetary policy and we're in the phase of the cycle where there's going to be then the cracks occur occurring and the negative um impact on economic activity and the like and it's going to be more difficult than normal because there's so much debt outstanding and we're you know what we just talked about so that is likely um to happen over let's say the next year and year and a half which means that it will take us in through the elections and what we have is a situation where the second of those influences the internal conflict influence is bad and you have a lot of populism so populists are people who will fight to win at all cost they're not calm compromisers you know I will fight and I will win for you and the rules be damned you know compromising be damned and um so you're going to have a political situation in terms of you know that kind of environment it's a bad time for that but it'll end up paying an impact on the um on the nature of the elections I think and then you have um the international conflict we are much closer to um a dead conflict a war of of sorts either a sanctions an economic war or even possibly a military war with China and because of the politics also that that will be pushing its limits too because there are um the one thing that most Americans are united on in both Democrats and Republicans are united on is anti-china and um as a result um you know and they all want a strong man or woman strong person uh on that and so I think you're going to see pushing of the limits there and that becomes a dangerous set of circumstances so I think that um if we take the next uh you know let's call it one two three years I think that those are going to be uh riskier years I spoke to an evolutionary psychologist and an evolutionary Anthropologist a little while ago on the show and they were teaching me about the values and the type of characteristics that ancestral tribes would have preferred in leaders at different states and in times of Warfare more dominant leaders were the ones that were preferred in times of Peace more prestigious leaders were the ones that were preferred makes complete sense if you are facing a scary tribe from the other Valley you want someone that's going to stand firm and is going to not take any and they're going to go for it when times of peace that person becomes a bit tyrannical it's a little bit too much energy when there's not anybody else to fight and it's so funny how you see this just same Dynamic to me it seems play out no matter how big the populations get it's essentially the same physics that's right it's it's happened repeatedly if you're if you're in a war what you want is um the commander and everybody you know to goddamn follow the instructions and just do what you're told and you know it's not like we're going to sit there and argue debate and and so on so what you see and is the breakdowns and particularly you see the breakdowns in um also when they're at odds there's a lot more to argue about um like now the populace of the left and the populace of the right and so in the 1930s you saw four democracies become dictatorships choose to become dictatorships they had parliaments that chose to become dictatorships Germany Italy Spain and Japan chose that because in order to fight yeah that's what you need and not your Anthropologist friends are um right on that yeah the consolidating power in an attempt to try and be able to enact more change more easily it's not we haven't got time we haven't got time to get this across the line diplomatically we haven't got time to get everybody on the same page we'll have one person who knows what they're doing and they'll Push It Forward one one thing that I and another thing that's common is um the foreign enemy when you have um a situation where you have internal dispute um um it's very very common to try to bring the country together get support by The Leader by having the common enemy you know and so we'll all rally around you know the leader and you could see you know it was like um you know when 9 11 happened and you know the president um you know Bush gets a standing ovation and we're all behind you in that fight and so that's yeah that's Timeless and Universal Dynamic if you can't bond yourselves together overshed love of an in-group shed hatred of an out group is a close enough proxy I suppose for that interim was there anything um over the last two years that you didn't anticipate or is there anything particularly unique about the situation that we're in now every what is it uh every time people say it's going to be different this time is there anything that could make things different this time or was there anything that you've been surprised by um you know by and large I haven't been surprised by I mean I didn't anticipate that we were going to have the war with Russia um so that um but I did anticipate that we were likely you know headed in a war-like environment it's very much fell with um as expected there um the economic and the financial very much is the same um so I'd have to uh uh you know by and large almost exactly it's transpired the way described and that's why again look I I did the video for free on YouTube um the changing World Order um what I'm trying to do is to just pass it along for people's consideration to understand the cause effect relationship that goes there but yes it's unfortunately going according to script that doesn't mean it's destined okay but it's difficult to take off track um what do I mean by that um each stage is then The Logical consequence of the stage that preceded it so let's take the existing situation the United States has a lot of debt and it has deficits so it has to sell debt now if you say and others are holding debt and if you say how do you get healthy um you have to spend less than you earn to get to not borrow money and get financially strong that's difficult and particularly when you have a lot of debt because you have to take a portion of your income and you have to pay the debt and also you're living in spending more than you're earning and so how do you Rectify that what cut spending I mean it's very difficult to cut spending or raise income that's not easy so Ray cut spending um what do you cut okay so we're living in a world now where um policy makers don't think how much money do I have to spend and what should I prioritize it on they think um how much money um you know how much money do I need to spend without regard to how much they have and then they go spend it and then they have deficits that um central banks can print it's just like the same as individuals they have the deficit but but in their case they have the capacity to print the money to pay the deficit so um it's not easy to fix the financial problem um the internal problem you know what it's like can you get people to come together to you know say this is a common problem let's have the left and the right and people very difficult people have big differences in values and conditions and so um it's very difficult to bring them together to deal with the problems and the same is true internationally you know easier said than done so um given that Dynamic there is then the stages and so it's pretty clear normally what comes next given all of these changes what do you think people can do to best prepare themselves financially for the next few years well I think that um in Saving um let's let's talk about that um there is I I think of savings in tears the first tier is to secure your well-being tone a portfolio of assets that are going to secure your well-being and then after you have that taken care of then you can go to the next level take more risk and so on um that well being that purchasing power has to be viewed in terms of inflation adjusted dollars you know if you're holding um a debt instrument and you know a cash paying instrument and it gives you a two percent interest and you have a five or six percent inflation you lose money at three percent a year so you have to look at that in real dollars and you have to hold that portfolio in a way that is balanced to any kind of economic environment and then the way I do it and I you know I I stood I remember you know I didn't have anything and then I started to acquire uh money and I start to think okay how much how many weeks do I have months do I have or years that I'm financially safe and what do I hold it in so and then you know once you got that taken care of you can go beyond it and um and I wanted it in a very well balanced portfolio that that type of portfolio that does equally well no matter what happens um I can explain that a little bit more if you want that'd be good okay um there are basically two big influences on markets um the growth rate and the inflation rate um like if you know that um growth is going to be faster than expected and inflation is going to be higher than expected you know you know that bonds are going to go down and vice versa so the way I I give that as an example um it so the way I look at it is there are those two big influences and then they can so I four environments and each one of them can go up or down so there are four quadrants that I think of rise in growth falling growth Rising inflation and falling inflation and I want to have a portfolio that will be 25 percent of my risk in each one of those so that I don't have any bias and so I pick the assets that are going to do well in each of those four quadrants and I hold them in a balanced way and I've tested that you know going back actually to 1900 and so on and you'll maintain you'll actually increase your buying power um and so it um you know that's the kind of thing that I think in the beginning then you have to also make provision for you know taxes to some extent so I say whatever that amount of money is I want twice as that so in case it goes in half and I want to build a portfolio that looks like that um for you know I don't know X number of years that I have that and that's the safe savings and then when I go beyond that then I'll take more uh risk but I think that being safe particularly in this kind of an environment is important and I would take a perspective of how to do that that's uh like the one I'm just describing what would be an example of an investment for each of those four quadrants well I'm worried that we're going to take a long time to explain it I've explained it uh elsewhere but let me give an example I'll I'll take it um like if growth so there's these four quadrants growth and inflation if if growth is less expense less than expected and inflation's less expected you would like to own bonds okay if it's higher than expected you would not want to own bonds okay if if inflation is higher than expected you would want to own assets such as Commodities and gold and inflation index bonds um if growth is faster than expected particularly if inflation is less than expected you'd want to own stocks so you get the idea one of the things that you brought up earlier on was the changing internal structure this is driven by a number of factors but one of them being increasing wealth inequality at the moment it seems like there is a decline in praising work ethic especially in the US do you think that that is a symptom or a cause of what we're seeing at the moment well I think the I'm referring to the let's say the wealth Gap um I think that there's a it's a there's a lot of um particularly unproductive people um for example um for various reasons but I I live in the state of Connecticut and my wife tries to help um students in the poorest neighborhoods that have the worst conditions and I'll give you um this example I the state of Connecticut is usually number one two or three in the richest state in the country but 22 percent out of the last survey it's actually higher than this 22 percent of the high school students in Connecticut have either dropped out of high school or are have absentee rates of greater than 25 percent in our failing classes and there's a great deal of poverty and the breakup of the families and and the guidance there's a cycle that takes place and so you're seeing um the general competitive education levels that can conditions um in the in Connecticut uh so we operate philanthropically and I'll give you an example um there was covet and the kids have to get educated and sixty thousand kids uh didn't have computers or connectivity and no government was going to do anything about it so you know we had to buy 60 000 computers to give it to kids in order for them to have education well this this and there's hunger and there's poverty and there's drugs um I lit it's it's how the educational system is funded um education is a state issue by the Constitution and then within a state it's a tax typically within a state it's a tax District issue so I live in Greenwich Connecticut which is relatively that's a real it's a rich uh sit down and the public education gets about twenty four thousand dollars per student last number I looked it's probably higher than that now gets twenty four thousand dollars a student up on the road at Bridgeport Connecticut 10 minutes up the road they get fourteen thousand dollars a student because there's no tax base and um and they need it more they need more money because you know the expenses of raising a kid are are you also have to get them the computer you've got to get them the you know the food the clothes all of those things and they have less food less clothes on all those things so um and well but in any case what you can see is the education test scores and measures of how we're doing in education relative to other countries uh have declined so part of it is uh education and circumstances part of it is drugs part of it is um you know there are lots of parts of it and then there's um a certain element of it which uh let's say because of covid or other reasons um that people have moved around and and say you know I don't have to work as hard anymore so you know just for example the change in the attitudes of restaurant workers you know okay I can I found another a way to live and so on and that's playing a role um of course also people um as the Baby Boomers are older um you know they drop out of it or they want to retire earlier and they do so there are a number of factors that affect um you know the this kind of set of circumstances the bit the wealth Gap is very much due to a self reinforcing cycle in which if you earn a lot of money you can afford to take care of your kids education you can raise them in a better way um if you don't earn a lot of money you don't have that privilege so and you know it so all through history um during those such times wealth gaps have increased so you look at the cycles um you have a new you know like a new world order like in the 1850s you know you have the Civil War and then you have that and then you have new technologies and inventing you have the Industrial Revolution take place and things go great but uh what it does is it also increases the wealth Gap some people make a lot of money others don't and it also increases the level of indebtedness and you make the turn of the century you there's then you see big conflicts over wealth you have the um Panic of 1907 and so what you see is the Industrial Revolution turns into What's called the Gilded Age in which there are very rich decadent um you know while there's poverty and you know in the early turn of the century um they're living people are living very very lavishly very decadently at the same time as their you know sweatshops and all of that and then there's kind of a revolutionary reaction to that so these things happen over and over again for the same reasons what would you tell young people then at the moment what advice would you give them um well um first of all uh learn learn how I'd say a few things first know your nature everyone has a different nature a way a pull what's their pull toward um I created a personality profile test called principles you it's I put it online for free and it tells you a lot about you know what your nature is and it also shows if you uh if you take the test and you do and you put somebody else's in they take the test it'll tell you about your relationship so you want to know what your nature is what your pull is going for and then you go through your journey of learning experiences that you know has its ups and downs and you know you learn you have your uh you know your painful experiences but I have a principle pain plus reflection equals progress you learn you get that and um and then to have perspective to understand um that all of these things events transpire you know know the whole cycle see the whole thing gain perspective and understand where you are in the cycle understand where you are in the life cycle there's a life cycle um you know from birth to death and not say it on average it lasts about 80 years and you know that at different parts in that cycle certain certain things are going to happen you're going to you know um first third of it you're going to be dependent on others and you're learning second third of it um you're going to be independent of your parents and so on and you're going to be others will become dependent on you and you're working to be successful at the various ages you you get married you have kids you all of these Cycles there's a life cycle that happens over and over again and then there are these other Cycles these cycles of um you know um you know let's call it almost from from war to war um um whether that's a internal War to changes the internal order or an external War changes the external order and there's a cycle that has to do with a debt cycle and those others and um and you you and you have to know what those Cycles are like and kind of where you are in those cycles and you navigate it at all I mean the main thing you know is be strong smart capable and adaptable but uh that's why I put out these um you know videos and books to try to help people understand that you mentioned one of the common life landmarks that people get to is having kids and getting married at the moment especially in the west but also even more so in Asia birth rates are falling through the floor we've got 0.78 I think in South Korea we've got just around about one in Japan China also looking really bad at the moment what how concerned are you about current population decline and future demographics well it's it's a it's a real burden uh and also depending on where it is it's a a real burden um because the young have to take care of the old um so let's say for example in China um that with the one child policy a married couple has four old adults that they have to take care of there's not an adequate social program um and that takes uh time and money um and it makes it you know a a great burden makes productivity a problem and so um you see you know like you say you know you see this um you know that that that is a these are burdens costs because the those who need taking care of um and are not earning money uh need um you know those resources and it's and it's sapping um you know one hopes that productivity increases faster than this burden and that but then it requires you you have to if you raise that you have to then divide the pie well so it's uh yeah it's um demographics is a burden you are maybe alluding that to stuff like AI uh robots robotized workforces assisting in terms of getting more juice out of the smaller demographics that we do have and the potential gains of that accruing to a small number of people that own that organization you need a relatively small group to be able to I don't know how many people are in the open AI company but something tells me it's a significantly smaller number than the amount of impact that it's had and is probably going to have right so that's exactly right so if you if the society as a whole can do that what it will do is it'll naturally make the people who some people very rich and some people very poor but it can raise productivity enough that um it can raise Livingstone let's just imagine robots always work there and you don't have to have people in doing the jobs um then what you can have then what you have to deal with is how do you redistribute the wealth and opportunity because as I say it'll be concentrated in some and others will lose jobs and um there's more productivity for the whole but you have a distribution issue are you familiar with Nicholas ebastad do you know him he wrote men without work no he came on the show he came on the show last week I think he'd be really interested the book's very very short and he's discovered this odd cohort of men that are lurking inside of the unemployment statistics the seven million men aged 22 to 55 in the US who aren't working and aren't looking for work only 10 of that number are students from the remaining 6.7 million about 2 000 hours is the average amount of time that they spend watching screens and 50 of that time on average is spent whilst on either prescription medication or weed recreational drugs and two-thirds of those men are living in homes that claim at least one disability benefit so basically lurking inside of the low unemployment numbers is this cohort of prime working age men who don't have a job and don't want a job either one of one of the potential Downstream implications for that is what does this mean for Universal basic income that if these men are able to be supported by social welfare but they're not they're not going out and enacting poetry staring up at the stars you know speaking their truth forward and dealing with the existential pain of living in a good way this doesn't seem like they're flourishing particularly and given the automation that's potentially coming down the pike I wonder what that means well I think you paint or he paints an accurate picture and obviously and it's not good you know um my as my wife was describing one shoes uh dealing with uh that population now it's very common for kids to come to school high and you know then they have what ages oh young ages you know 10. wow okay well marijuana is readily available and um so yeah we have a number of these issues we've brought China up a couple of times and I think based on what I know about your work the conflict between the USA and China uh as China the ascending new power that may be overtaking the USA however we do have this perhaps uh unprecedented demographic collapse that China's facing the best predictions that I've seen suggest that it's going to go from about 1.1 to 1.2 billion now to about 650 to 700 million by 2050. so it's pretty much getting chopped in half does that uh change the way that uh the world orders change moving forward uh I think the main thing with China right now is um you know we're on the brink of war with China for various reasons um you know like um I hope we make it to 2050. um foreign so um yeah the demographics as is as I describe it um and by the way them losing doesn't make us winning um just so we're look look at that you know we hope everyone gets better um and the world economy we hope everybody has a better way um nobody everybody loses in wars and so um you know that's their set of circumstances and it'll be what it'll be I think the most important thing is how do we deal with our circumstances you know how do we become strong and healthy financially healthy Health productivity healthy and so on so um yeah that we could talk about the demographic problem in in China um which is just what we talked about before in terms of you know there's Robotics and productivity and all that make up for that I don't know but um I really think we're projecting too much on the outside world okay what do we do with China what of what relevance well we trade with China we don't have to go to a military war with China I mean let's why would we we shouldn't do that um you know um and um and then if that's the case you know what's the problem with them growing you know you know okay but there's not it's not very much you know okay let them grow and invent and let us grow and invent and share the inventions that would be good um but the problems that we're facing are pretty much our own problems the things we're talking about and the breakdown of infrastructure and you know all of that so really um I think we should focus on that and you know maybe they're demographic Graphics is a big burden or not you know they have other big burdens too we all do but let's focus on how we can be as good as we can be yeah as opposed to presuming that this is zero-sum game is China finds life harder therefore America finds life easier that doesn't work yeah I understand um you might have seen the restrict act which was brought up recently it's lining up a potential ban for different types of online services and it seems like one of the potential bases for Banning Tick Tock from America which again to me just um further embeds this them and us China is enemy if we can remove that influence from the West as much as possible then we are going to end up in a better situation well that's the dynamic yes what do you think about the fed's messaging about this soft Landing thing is that possible like historically I don't think it's it's really happened but do they have enough control over the economy to be able to make this work the big issue is that um a lot of debt was created a lot of it is government debt but it is also corporate to a less extent household debt um uh um so um if you look at the Silicon Valley Valley Bank issue um it's not so much their issue as much as a worldwide issue and what happened is that you know what's a bank a bank takes in deposits um and then it takes that money and it invests it in things and so they bought a lot of government bonds that had a higher yield than they were paying out in the deposits there's a tightness of monetary policy and those yields went up and the bonds went down in value and then the amount they have to pay out went up in value and so they went broke and that is happening all over that happens not only through Banks Banks as a whole did a lot of that but um insurance companies and so on all around the world same sort of thing happened in Europe same sort of thing happened with Japanese on companies even buying US dollar bonds a lot and um and so you have um if you were to Mark those to Market you would have a a terrible calamity um but what's going to likely happen is they don't want any more of those bonds and we're going to have to sell more bonds because we're going to have a deficit so when you have a deficit you have to pay for it through selling debt and there's a lesser demand for that debt and um I think that that creates um you know a problem in which either interest rates go up or the Federal Reserves got to come in and print and this is a problem that exists also in Europe with the European Central Bank the bank of Japan all of them so that's where that's where we are um and it has knocked on effects it's like dominoes that fall so it will produce less credit and as it produces less credit less less demand less less credit that'll produce less spending it'll come in certain parts of the economy for example commercial real estate um for example um venture capital and private equity for example um low-grade uh bonds where they have it heavily indebted con company and the interest rate goes up a lot and that causes problems so I think you're in the part of the cycle where you've had the tightening and then the dominoes are beginning to fall and I think that that's going to produce um more uh more problems so I think when it comes down to it there's just too much debt and and we're adding it to it too quickly and so it's going to um either that debt will be paid off with hard money in which case there's not much Printing and so on or it'll be paid off with um printing a lot of money to make it easier to pay off I think in the end it'll it's always the case that they print a lot of money in and make it easier to pay off but you have the reduced value of money so that's how it looks to me and you'll have probably a stagflation environment and because you have that Dynamic going on at the same time as you have supply chain disruptions because of the geopolitical um I think it's going to be a difficult environment let's say that we do hit quite an aggressive recession what are some of the ways that people could even look to benefit financially from that happening are there any things that individuals can do um the most important thing as I say is to have this basic well Diversified and you know there's some assets and and think about different you know a small percentage of your money even in asset like gold or or and diversification for countries you know to just to create a diversified portfolio is important one of the things that did occur you mentioned uh Silicon Valley Bank that there was a big bump in terms of Bitcoin into the cryptocurrencies around about that time and it seemed like one of the first periods where people genuinely saw crypto as a store of value as a way to just I I need to put my money somewhere that I feel is safe and given the last 18 months of what's happened with crypto considering that as that's the place I'm going to store my Assets in order for it to be safe I think said quite a lot about how people sort of perceived the state of the dollar and the security of Banks and stuff at the moment what what's the role of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in a the current economy in your in your eyes um I think um cryptocurrency or Bitcoin um doesn't move in a reliable way related to almost anything it's uh you know moves up and down because of um this mood and that move and mood um and um unlike gold let's say I I would prefer gold and and I would prefer crypto for various reasons crypto um it's very easy to track the owners and transactions in it it's not liked by the government um it's um it doesn't move in a way that's consistent with you know kind of any of the environments and it's a fairly and it's a small asset class um you know we talk a lot more about it but its size is about you know 30 percent of the size of Microsoft and Microsoft is one stock among many stocks so uh it's given probably a lot more attention um I don't know uh you know who who knows maybe you know there's some element of it I don't understand why people are more inclined to go to bitcoin than gold um if you look internationally um gold is uh for central banks the third highest Reserve asset first is dollars then Euros then gold then uh Japanese Yen um and Central Bankers are buying gold and they're not buying um bonds and um and so and it's you know Timeless and Universal it's been there so um but um you know um so I'm not I'm not a big fan of it as I've said before um you know having a little bit I have a little bit of it but if you have a little bit of it you have to um think about those things and you know like I said you know you have to be prepared for it to fall a lot you know if it goes down 80 or something but that limits the amount that you can have in it so I don't know it's um I don't think a lot of Bitcoin I think what's interesting there is holding crypto essentially has a cognitive load on you using it as somewhere that you're using for investment as a store of value to just put assets that you've got it's almost that there is a price that you pay because of the volatility but the price that you pay is with your own sanity with regards to that um which is something that I hadn't quite considered there are less sanity sapping forms of investment yeah that's a that's a good way to do you know what I mean I've seen so many people you know I've seen people get very rich and I've seen people get very broke with it I have friends in both camps yeah so you know we've spoken about today this very quickly changing highly volatile environment that we're in whether that be socioculturally politically globally locally financially where should people go in order to find um some solace in this given the fact that it is difficult it's difficult to exist in this world um go to go to places or spend time where there's not as much of this junk going on you know um I mean first of all I think recognize let's let's go to some of the basics um what do you really need um you know you need a bed to sleep in you need food to eat um um most depressions most people remain employed most wars most people don't get die or get in injured um uh so um you know let's put let's calm down and put all this in place bit let's be in places where there's um you know goodness and Harmony and Beauty you know maybe spend more time in nature or you know you go out there and um I'd like to meditate meditate is meditation has had a big effect on me so um yeah um don't get all stressed about it you know navigate it well um and you know enjoy life enjoy those things and I think that that's you know that I think that's most important what would you say to the people that say how am I expected to enjoy life when there's all of this chaos going on there's so many bad news stories and headlines and what about the financial collapse well um first of all if it's really having that impact on you don't get so hung up on the financial stories and you don't don't watch the television or something you know go out for a nice walk and in the nature like all that story you don't really need all that story Okay now what's going to happen to you like I say um you know don't get so hung up on expectations of having the most amount of money or whatever just you know think about it um like I say where will you lose where you live well you you know um what matters you know uh your friends your family your um you know give a bed to a good bed to sleep in for adequate food right out into nature you know like uh my own view is sometimes you know like the most luxurious thing I can do is take a tent and be out in a beautiful spot you know um so um you know avoid it uh you know no don't get stretched out you know understand it be prepared redefining success and what happiness means and what we should be aiming for in life I think is a a very worthwhile Pursuit right I'll tell you um this idea of success being measured in the amount of money and status you have is really screwed up um like if you think about money and and this is uh com shown in measures of happiness um past the basic amount of money so that you don't have uh the misery there is no correlation between the level of money you have and the level of happiness you have lots of studies show that and the highest correlation is do you have a community and that's the highest source of um happiness and also it longevity it has a big effect on longevities stress and smoking more than stopping alcohol more than going to the gym and exercising right right and so uh and then you think like what is money for it has no intrinsic value it only has a value of what it buys and so um it has a limited marginal ability you benefit you you add more and more to it and you know like what are you gonna do okay so you're going to get a bigger house or a bigger car or what what you know okay um and what does that really mean incrementally relative to spending time with friends and family and all of those things you know most of the good things in life are not expensive right um friends family uh nature sex anything you know it's not going to get better with more money right material and better and so um it seems to me that um it then can become an obsession um and that's not healthy so I think it's you know by and large you handle it well and it's all going to be okay um it's all gonna be okay Ray dalio ladies and gentlemen if people want to keep up to date with the work that you're doing why should they go um my more lengthy writings are on LinkedIn but I'm on all of the social media so um in various ways and and when if I write something that's longer um it'll it'll be linked to uh LinkedIn so you know all the major social media I'm on right I really appreciate you thank you for today thank you for your time what's happening people thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a 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