Key insights from

How Countries Go Broke

How Countries Go Broke

By Ray Dalio

Audio available 9 minute read Published Jun 3, 2025

What you'll learn

Ray Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, and the author of Principles.

In How Countries Go Broke, Ray Dalio draws on five decades of betting on government bond markets to explain what he calls the Big Debt Cycle: the slow, measurable process by which nations borrow too much, strain their currencies and eventually face a reckoning. You’ll learn why credit works like a circulatory system, which warning signs to watch, why governments that print their own money rarely default outright, what Japan and the fallen reserve currencies of the past teach the United States, and the balanced plan Dalio believes could still head off a crisis.

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Key insights

  1. • What you'll learn
  2. 1 Plaque in the Arteries
  3. 2 One Person’s Debt, Another’s Asset
  4. 3 The Long Cycle of Debt
  5. 4 Gauges Worth Watching
  6. 5 Printing Is a Quiet Default
  7. 6 Why Reserve Currencies Fall
  8. 7 Japan’s Cautionary Tale
  9. 8 More Than Money at Stake
  10. 9 The Three Percent Solution

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