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“Unimaginably worse than I ever could have thought possible.”
When Ray Dalio speaks, people tend to listen. And the billionaire founder of fund manager Bridgewater came out swinging in his Fourth of July message, posted on his LinkedIn page.
His slam wasn’t targeted at Joe Biden or Donald Trump (though, hey, if the shoe fits)…
No, Dalio was throwing his entire generation, the Baby Boomers, under the bus.
That’s a little unfair of him, considering some of the greatest entrepreneurs in American history were Baby Boomers, including Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and even Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who just barely squeezes into the generation (depending on who you ask). His birth year of 1964 makes Bezos either the tail end of the Boomers or the very beginning of Gen X.
But when it comes to the politicians of that generation… Dalio has a point. The Boomers running the country for the past 30 years have really run the place into the ground.
In Dalio’s own words,
I also saw the generation that came after the greatest generation (i.e., my generation) run up government debt, let the country’s infrastructure break down, allow huge polarities in opportunities and living conditions to develop which led to pervasive economic and social inequalities, homelessness, mental illness and drug problems, and the relative decline of America’s economic, military, and moral leadership in the world.
I will correct Mr. Dalio on one hairsplitting technical point…
Legendary trader Tom Gentile predicted the rise of Artificial Intelligence more than five years ago and gave his readers a chance to turn $10,000 into…
Almost $35,000 in shares of Meta… $42,600 in shares of Microsoft… and more than $325,000 in shares of Nvidia.
Joe Biden isn’t actually a Baby Boomer. He’s just a couple years too old to have made the cut. For the demographic statistics nerds out there (yes, we’re out there, lurking among you), Biden is actually a member of the Silent Generation, those born between 1928 and 1945. But I digress…
The national debt is my bugbear. Debts in general are my bugbear.
I would rather kill myself before I left my children to pay debts I was irresponsible enough to run up. Such would be my sense of shame.
And yet our Boomer Commanders in Chief – George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and honorary Boomer Joe Biden – have done exactly that. We, and our children, will be paying the interest on the debt these grifters ran up long after they’re dead and feeding the worms.
(Yes, I know Bill Clinton is a Boomer as well… but he is the only one of that motley crew to balance the budget.)
But Dalio is just warming up. He continues…
It is surrealistically shocking to me to see the condition the United States is in, such chronically horrendous leadership that has reached an apex in terribleness that is reflected in our two presidential candidates, our representatives in Congress, and how they deal with each other. They are so unimaginably worse than I ever could have thought possible.
“Chronically horrendous leadership” might actually be too generous. I’d say “the gaping vacuum where leadership was supposed to be” would be a better description.
Bill Clinton was our first Boomer president, serving from 1993 to 2001. And here’s a fun fact about Mr. Clinton: He’s two months younger than Donald Trump and four years younger than Joe Biden despite retiring from the presidency 23 years ago.
Biden came to office at a time when America needed a sense of normalcy. Trump’s four years, whether you loved him or hated him, were chaotic and loud even before the pandemic turned the world upside down. Biden could have come in and been the grandfatherly voice of calm, given us four years of low drama, and then retired on his own terms as a one-term president with his legacy and dignity intact.
Instead, he’s going to be remembered as the stubborn old fool who didn’t know when to quit. He’ll either lose the election or – as we predicted back in December – be forced out of the nomination in disgrace by his own party and replaced by a Shadow Candidate.
To borrow from Dalio again, it’s a situation “unimaginably worse than I ever could have thought possible.”And yet here we are.
I’d recommend you give my presentation with Freeport Society friend Louis Navellier a good watch. We lay out the risks that the Shadow Candidate brings and a roadmap for how to prepare. You’ll find it here.
To life, liberty, and the pursuit of wealth… despite who takes the White House next,
Charles Sizemore
Chief Investment Strategist, The Freeport Society
P.S. Lest you feel the need to rise up and defend old Joe, pause and understand that I do not paint a target on his back alone. I – as do we all here at The Freeport Society – believe that BOTH presidential candidates have already proven themselves wrong for the mantle of power they seek. We’re also acutely aware that none of the backups waiting in the wings are much better. That’s why it’s important to do everything in your power to protect your wealth and grow it as much as possible while you still can. Save the indignant outcries and focus instead on what matters most to you and your family: life, liberty, and the right to build your legacy.
