{"id":622444,"date":"2026-10-06T16:42:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/622444\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T16:42:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:42:17","slug":"ray-dalio-predicts-debt-crisis-within-3-years-after-borrowing-binge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/622444\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray Dalio Predicts Debt Crisis Within 3 Years After Borrowing Binge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ray Dalio says the US is careening toward a debt crisis<\/a> before the end of this decade.<\/p>\n

The billionaire investor said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Tuesday that he anticipates<\/a> a debt crisis “within the next three years,” or by the fall of 2029.<\/p>\n

The author of “How Countries Go Broke” and founder of hedge-fund behemoth Bridgewater Associates said the scale of the national debt\u00a0and the\u00a0rate at which it’s growing<\/a>\u00a0mean we’re “approaching our limits.”<\/p>\n

US debt breached<\/a> the $40 trillion mark in August, representing an inflation-adjusted increase of more than $10 trillion, or over 33%, since 2019.<\/p>\n

Dalio said that this trajectory is unsustainable because of the soaring cost of servicing the debt. Those interest payments exceed $1 trillion<\/a> a year or almost one-fifth of the federal budget, leaving less money for Social Security, healthcare, defense, education, and other priorities.<\/p>\n

“When debts accumulate faster than they’re paid back, then debt service costs grow,” he said. “That becomes a higher and higher percentage of one’s cash flow. And when that happens, it starts to squeeze out spending<\/a>. And so then you have a problem.”<\/p>\n

Dalio also underscored that geopolitical tensions have tempered other countries’ demand for US debt. Moreover, the AI boom has become “heavily debt-financed<\/a>,” which threatens to tighten credit in riskier categories such as auto loans, he said.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street veteran warned that trend could feed tensions<\/a> over the wealth gap, as “the people who have less get squeezed the most in that part of the cycle.”<\/p>\n

Dalio said he’s seeing even AI hyperscalers “begin to encounter issues<\/a>” with accessing credit, and he’s “starting to see those limits being hit.”<\/p>\n

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He suggested that AI companies are overinvesting<\/a> to ensure they’re competitive in an uncertain future market, potentially inflating a tech bubble.<\/p>\n

He added that bubbles burst when people need cash, for example, if they need to repay loans or pay a wealth tax<\/a>, and that’s a phenomenon to “keep an eye on.”<\/p>\n

Dalio has been sounding the alarm<\/a> on a debt crisis for years. He’s described rising debt as an “aggressive cancer,” and said it “accumulates like plaque” on a financial system and threatens to cause a “heart attack” for the US economy.<\/p>\n

He’s also said the debt threat has combined with political division and foreign wars to form a “perfect storm<\/a>,” and he feels like he’s “on a boat headed to rocks.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ray Dalio says the US is careening toward a debt crisis before the end of this decade. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-622444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}