Ray Dalio: U.S. on ‘brink of terrible civil war’
Ray Dalio, founder and co-chairman of the Westport-headquartered Bridgewater Associates, took to Twitter on Sunday with a six-part tweet warning that political and economic divisions are splitting the country into civil war territory, though he added optimism in President Joe Biden”™s call for a new era in American unity.
Dalio noted that last February he publicly called for a president who could “bring together our country to face our challenges in a more united and less divisive way.” Although not mentioning former President Trump and the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, Dalio in his tweets called attention to the deepening of partisan divides and President Biden”™s promises to unify the nation.
“I believe we are on the brink of a terrible civil war (as I described in The Changing World Order series), where we are at an inflection point between entering a type of hell of fighting or pulling back to work together for peace and prosperity that addresses the big wealth, values, and opportunity gaps we”™re now seeing,” he tweeted. “For that reason I was thrilled to hear what President Biden said at his inauguration. It is consistent with the direction history has shown the country needs to move in.”
The Westport-based hedge fund executive closed his Twitter observation by questioning if Biden and the GOP could bring about a more peaceful political environment.
“Good words and spirit aren”™t enough,” Dalio tweeted. “People will have to agree on both how to grow the pie and how to divide it well. That will require revolutionary change. Doing it peacefully requires both bipartisanship and skill. It won”™t be easy. Our country is still in a terrible financial state and terribly divided.”
This is the second time in a month that Dalio has used the expression “civil war” to highlight political and economic divisions ”“ his previous comments, made in a CNN interview, defined the exodus of companies and business professionals from New York and Silicon Valley to Florida and Texas as “a form of civil war: people are leaving to go from one place to another, partially for taxes, but also partially for other reasons. The worst alternative is that one side or another says, ”˜This isn’t my country anymore. This isn’t my population.”™”