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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Ray Dalio | TIME100 Talks [Watch (HLS stream): Ray Dalio | TIME100 Talks](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ZSewhtjG.m3u8) (14:46)  _Published 2020-10-29. Ray Dalio on leading through uncertainty. Interviewed by Sam Jacobs, TIME Deputy Editor._ --- Jul 28, 2023 4:54 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Michelle Bachelet, Yuriko Koike and Ray Dalio | TIME100 Talks \(Full Event\)](/video/ZhBqh4NX/):20 ### Michelle Bachelet, Yuriko Koike and Ray Dalio | TIME100 Talks (Full Event) [TIME100 Talks](/video/IdWTOnTV/):06 ### TIME100 Talks [Ray Rice Apology](/video/Fu9CAHZT/) ### Ray Rice Apology --- ## Transcript I'm Time deputy editor Sam Jacobs, and I'm joined by Ray Dalio, TIME 100 honoree and founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund. Ray, what's the single piece of advice you would give to an investor today. That don't think of? I think I'll give two if. Well, if you ask me for just one, I would say diversify. And when I mean diversify, I mean diversify your asset classes, diversify your currencies and diversify your country's. I will add a second, and that is that realize that cash is the riskiest asset class or one of the riskiest asset class in an environment in which the government is printing a lot of cash and producing negative real returns for you. So you will get a negative real return of about 2% a year. Don't think of it as the safest asset class just because it doesn't move around a lot. Let's let's talk about governments printing a lot of that cash. As you mentioned, it's one of the macroeconomic trends that you warned about today. This global increase in credit, central banks like the Federal Reserve printing a lot of money to keep our economy afloat. From your position, what's the long term impact of that decision? Well, first of all, it has to be done because as when you get to the point that you have too much debt and you hit zero interest rates and you want to get money in the hands of people who need it most, the way that can happen and it's happened throughout history, is that the government borrows a lot of money and the central bank does want interest rates to go up. And it brings a lot of money to give those checks out there. However, everything comes with a cost, and the cost is that the value of that money and the value of debt goes down. And as a result, you see it first in other assets. You see it in the appreciation of other store holds of wealth, such as stock and gold. And you see it in the depreciation of one currency in relationship to another. It's a very dangerous situation. So we have to be aware of that because it can threaten the position of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. And the reason that's important is because when the U.S. dollar is a reserve currency and people want to save and then it allows us to borrow some so much. But that's the problem, too. I want to talk a little bit about your company, Bridgewater Associates. It's it's known for its intense and distinct work culture. All of our offices and companies have been transformed by COVID 19. How has the coronavirus pandemic affected how you all work together? Well, we're largely still remote. I would say maybe 80% remote, and we find remote to work very well. We were all set up for that because of different kinds of event risks. We could have a hurricane power outages and so on, and it's turned out to work very well. But we find that being together is a great thing, too. But how we do that is, you know, more plan. So there's times to get together, maybe a smaller percentage of the time when there's a project being worked on with social distancing, that kind of thing. Your your life may be a living example of the benefits of capitalism. You've you've benefited greatly from our system, but you also feel like there are problems with capitalism today. What's broken in our capitalist system? Well, I think you start with the goal, like what was what do you want a system to do? I'll speak personally. I was born at a time and came in where there was a world of equal opportunity. My parents were lower middle class parents. My dad was a jazz musician. My mom was a stay at home mom. I went to a public school. I got a good education. I came out to a world of equal opportunity. I could come up with ideas and I did what I did. It's now unfair. If you look at the outcomes first, do we agree that that is the American dream and that's what we should operate? Provide something close to equal opportunity? Should the benefits be broad based and and so on? So I believe, like when I look at the education system, particularly in poor areas and so on, it's a problem. The I did a study of what the economic conditions were by quintiles top 20% next 20% and so on. And I particularly stopped, studied the bottom 60%, which is the majority of the population. And I saw that in the top 40% of the population, they spent on average five times as much money in their children's education in the bottom 60%. It's not fair. It it's not fair. And it narrows the population that you're drawing people from. So you're not going to tap the full talent pool. It's not productive. And history shows it's not sustainable. But it's I don't think it's any bad guys doing anything wrong. It's a system in which profit pursuit at itself is not going to accomplish all of its objectives. I mean, let's say, for example, you invent technologies that replace people that is efficient for the system as a whole, but it does create a wider wealth gap or a globalization is a great thing in terms of a global meritocracy and efficient production. But it does mean that jobs move in other places, and so it has to be restructured in a way where it achieves those other goals. Otherwise, it's not it's not achieving broad based opportunity. It's not fair. And history has shown it won't be sustainable. That's why when I combine it with the two other factors. In other words, I'm dealing with the debt factor. Okay. When you combine these factors, when you are overly indebted and you're printing money and you're thinking that that's going to be sustainable and you have a large wealth gap and you have an economic downturn, you throughout history have conflict, you have civil wars. There are possibilities of different types of civil wars. So when you look at what's happening around us now in terms of the types of conflict, what is the conflict most is about. It's about money mostly, although all the other issues. And so that in and of itself undermines productivity. It's bad. So that capitalist system, which is very good in many ways, it brings out entrepreneurship that allocates resources in many ways efficiently. It is not good enough and it needs to be reformed. And I'm worried that, you know, by and large capitalists know how to increase the size of the pie and come up with ideas and are adaptable and so on, but they don't know how to divide the pie. Well, and socialists don't know how to make the pie bigger as well. And so there needs to be an thoughtful, knowledgeable engineering of what is going to produce inclusive productivity. I want to keep talking about this idea of a wealth gap. There's an expression that's increasingly popular among some on the left that every billionaire is a policy failure. Do you disagree? I completely disagree. Well, first of all, I don't like it because cause one of the problems of these phases is demonizing one group relative to another group. So in other words, let's say I was to say any policy, any group is a failure. That's I think that that's not true. And if I but let's put it this way. If let's imagine we didn't have billionaires and think of all the things that wouldn't have been invented. So they most people were successful billionaires. Most of them were self-made billionaires. They didn't even try to become billionaires. I didn't try to become a billionaire. I just like the thing I did. You come up with a new idea, you implement a new idea. And if what your offering is worth more than the cost of you producing, you make a profit and the thing grows. And so this is what scares me, because it fuels productivity. If you're looking at what's happening in China in terms of the IPOs, for example, that they turn to capitalism and they make billionaires that don't. I would say I understand the complaint. Okay. It's not the making of the billionaires. It's the making of the lack of equal opportunity. It's it's the making of those problems that I just spoke about. I mean, I think it would be great if everybody, you know, Deng Xiaoping said it's glorious to be rich. And what I mean is you want those opportunities to bring everybody up in a broad based way. And I'm really worried about the demonization of any group. Another trend that we're seeing in the rise of billionaires is a rise of billionaire philanthropy. And you're certainly someone who's who's given a lot to causes like health, justice and public education. What do you say to someone who says, I think billionaires and individuals like Ray Dalio are having too big a role when it comes to these important public policy decisions? And we need to restructure our society so that government, again, is leading on this as opposed to people like Bill Gates and Ray Dalio. Well, first of all, I would say that the government and the population as a whole has to determine the rules and there are benefits and drawbacks to having people be able to earn the amount of money they want and then to be able to direct it. In many cases, I think it's the private sector can do a good job, but the public sector needs to do a better job too. I think it's all a matter of the quality of the management. I would say, though, I think the cycle through time has been a beautiful cycle. You know, it's not for me to say how that system was works just as long as it works well. Are you hopeful? The truth is, I'm not very hopeful, only because I'm a I'm a. You know, it's easy to say I'm hopeful. I wish I could say I'm hopeful. People would prefer me to say I'm hopeful. And I guess I'm hopeful over the long term, let's say maybe 15 years. I'm I think the whole question is how we are with each other, whether we can work for a common dream, a common vision together, or whether we will continue to drift at being at each other's throats in a way that becomes increasingly threatening. What I'm seeing now is that it I'm seeing a more win at all cost mentality and I'm seeing a lack of respect for the common good and a lot. And as a result, even matters of who gets power and how they get power. So those things concern me because I did a study of history over the last 500 years. You could see it, read it on LinkedIn of to see how the reserve empire, reserve currency empires rose and decline. And what I saw is that when they got in financial trouble and there was more of a fighting over wealth, there was more emotion and there was more hatred and there was more win at all cost. And the type of fighting that they had with each other was, I mean, very bad, very disruptive. So I can rattle off the cases and so I'm watching that progress. I don't want the fighting. I think that if you look at societies that have been successful, what they do is they find a way of agreeing what's the cause. So, for example, if we could agree equal copper, tuna today is an objective and also making sure that the basics are well taken care of. In other words, first and foremost, equal education, something close to equal education, equal basic health care to make sure that those are taken care of and that we can raise a population of civil people and goes out into opportunity and that they are productive, we will have a good outcome. And if we can do that together and I a way where we listen to each other and so on, I think that that is the only path to success and I'm worried that we're not on that path. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, thank you very much for joining us on Time100 talks. 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