Ray Dalio warns of ‘great disorder’ period for world economy, marked by ‘clash of great powers’—just like the 1930s | Fortune

The billionaire investor made an X (formerly Twitter) post Saturday titled “It’s Official: The World Order Has Broken Down,” pronouncing the modern global order dead. The billionaire investor cited a recent report from the Munich Security Conference, a global forum for discussing international security challenges. The report, titled “Under Destruction,” claims the world has entered an era of “wrecking-ball politics” where “sweeping destruction—rather than careful reforms and policy corrections—is the order of the day.”

“There is great disorder arising from being in a period in which there are no rules, might is right, and there is a clash of great powers,” Dalio wrote in his X post, referencing his 2021 book Principles for Dealing With the Changing World Order. In his book, he evaluates 500 years of human history to explain why some empires succeed and others fail, describing a six-stage, 80-year cycle that tracks the evolution of monetary policy and international order.

Dalio, the founder of the largest hedge fund in history, has for years used his Big Cycle framework to caution that the U.S. is deep into what he calls Stage 5—the “pre-breakdown phase” characterized by bad financial conditions and internal conflict. His latest post is the first time the billionaire investor has claimed the U.S. has finally entered Stage 6, the violent finale of order collapse, characterized by revolution and WWII-like conditions.

The ‘final and most painful stage’ of history

In chapter six of his book, which Dalio shared in his most recent X post, he outlines that the fading global order could give way to “lose-lose relationships” when rival powers fall into the prisoner’s dilemma resulting in wars where the cost in lives and money far outweigh any potential benefits. He maintains international institutions are too weak to contend with the interests of wealthy nations like the U.S. and China, leading him, along with world leaders, to conclude the rules-based order is officially dead.

According to his book, Dalio says the transition to Stage 6 could entail a series of trade wars, technology wars, geopolitical wars, and capital wars, all of which have the possibility of culminating in a military conflict once those conflicts materialize as an existential threat for countries. The investor says the conflict between the U.S. and China over Taiwan is currently the one most well-positioned to explode into a violent offense.

While optimists like Google DeepMind CEO Sir Demis Hassabis, imagine humanity on the verge of a new renaissance thanks to AI advancements and “radical abundance,” Dalio predicts we could be returning to that solemn pre-WWII scenario. Hassabis, to be sure, believes it will come about in roughly a decade’s time, begging the question of whether darkness of the kind that Dalio foresees will precede the light.

Dalio cites converging opinions from global leaders of opposing political views to hammer this point through, claiming there is “now nearly universal agreement that the post-1945 world order has broken down.” He cites French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments that Europe must prepare for war and Rubio’s assertion that the “old world” is gone.

The billionaire investor has edged toward this conclusion for years. Yet, he’s grown even more bullish on the transition to Stage 6 since the beginning of the year. At Davos last month, the billionaire investor said President Donald Trump’s Greenland threats were an obvious indicator that the rule-based system was “gone.” And he recently posted another lengthy essay on X, arguing the president’s violent immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, paired with skyrocketing national debt, signaled a transition to Stage 6.

For the billionaire manager, the breakdown of the international rules-based order goes hand in hand with the erosion of international monetary policy. During a conversation with Fortune at Davos, Dalio warned that the U.S.’s surging $38 trillion national debt is a hallmark of late-stage cycle imbalances, much like previous events in history before a downturn. 

In the conversation, he laid out a troubling binary choice for policymakers: “Do you print money or do you let a debt crisis happen?”