Worldview Investing - Ruminations on the World Economy

Credit: H. Lawrence March 4, 2026            Perdition: the state of eternal damnation, hell or utter ruin . Ray Dalio, a prolific writer about the world's economies, founder of the world's largest hedge fund, frequent interviewee (see many YouTube videos) and creator of financially oriented animated videos viewed by over 200 million people, published a book last year called " How Countries Go Broke, The Big Debt Cycle ." This post addresses his research on the collapse of thirty-five nations over the last hundred years in which either governments and/or their central banks went broke.     Dalio points to a repeating sequence of events that follow the end of Big Debt Cycles triggering each of those national collapses: 1.  The private and government sectors get deeply in debt. 2. The private sector suffers a debt crisis of some sort (e.g., massive loan repayment defaults, bank lending crisis) and the government goes deeper into debt ...

Source:WWE.com       At this WWE event, the contestants (red and blue) act out their carefully orchestrated scripts. The fans stand and scream their support for one and their outrage at the other. The "official" in a stripped shirt pretends to ensure that the "rules" are being followed. At the end of the night, the performers  go home richer but bruised and the fans go home poorer but entertained. Most people, but not all, recognize that it was all performance art.     T he two US political parties try mightily to convince voters that they are very different. Both argue that they have the solutions necessary to solve the nation's vexing problems. At political fund raising events people stand and scream support for their candidate and their outrage at the other. At the end of the night, the politicians go home richer and their supporters go home poorer but entertained. Most people, but not all, fail to recognize that it was all performance art.  ...

Source: Shutterstock.com     So wrote Sun Tzu the famous Chinese General (born in 544 B.C.). T here is plenty of chaos around the world today including the continuing hostilities between Israel and Palestine and Russia's war in Ukraine. Trump has added to the chaos. He has grabbed the President of Venezuela (kidnapped), seized multiple foreign owned oil tankers (piracy on the high seas), dropped bombs on Iran's nuclear development site, Somalia, Nigeria, and Syria (acts of war), threatened Iran's and Columbia's political leaders with military attack for their drug dealing, corruption, and violent suppression of protests ("war mongering"), threatened the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank with criminal charges for his reluctance to lower interest rates as demanded (intimidation) and threatened to seize Greenland, the protectorate of a NATO ally. His belligerence toward and tariff attacks on Canada push his neighbor to the north into the welcoming arms of Chin...

Source: Shutterstock      One of Donald Trump's major goals is to return the many tens of thousands of US jobs lost to overseas manufacturers. He hopes to make those jobs available to American workers, revitalize the US economy and ensure the US is less dependent for essential goods on often-hostile foreign nations. It is possible that some of those jobs can be returned to the US, but it will be a fraction of the total that have been lost over the last thirty years.      There are two reasons for this. First, few Americans are willing to work in sweatshop-like conditions for 10-12 hours a day, as are third-world workers who happily left behind the hardships and penury of rural subsistence farming. US businesses can build multi-million dollar factories to sew leisure wear and Nike trainers or assemble cell phones and other consumer goods, but they will despair at finding people willing to work grueling shifts. Second, US wages (hourly rates plus cost of bene...