How the Economic Machine Works

How does the economy really work? This simple but not simplistic video by Ray Dalio, Founder of Bridgewater Associates, shows the basic driving forces behind the economy, and explains why economic cycles occur by breaking down concepts such as credit, interest rates, leveraging and deleveraging.

This is a thought-provoking interview between Ray Dalio and Larry Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University and former U.S. Treasury Secretary and is based off Dalio's 30-minute animated video entitled "How the Economic Machine Works."

A new study on the rises and declines of past leading empires that puts today’s economic, political, and policy situation into perspective of the big picture.

The laws of physics give us the concepts of potential energy and kinetic energy. For example, when a ball is held high above the ground, it has a lot of potential energy; when the ball is released and in motion, this turns into kinetic energy; and when the ball is on the ground at rest, it has neither. Economies have analogous dynamics. Explore how developed economies now have limited potential energy left to draw on and how to approach investing in such a world.

This report is an examination of populism, the phenomenon — how it typically germinates, grows, and runs its course.

Today, wealth and income skews are so great that average statistics no longer reflect the conditions of the majority of Americans. To give you a sense of what the picture below the averages look like, we broke the economy into two economies — that of the top 40% and that of the bottom 60%.

Almost every major driver of US corporate profit margins has improved in the last two decades, boosting equity returns. Explore these driving forces of the past and how sustainable they are going forward.

Many of the forces that fueled the secular rise in US profit margins have buoyed company profits across the developed world, while Chinese companies saw profit margins shrink. Explore how these drivers have affected global margins and how equity valuations could change in the future.

For the first time in history central banks (most importantly the Fed) are producing enough money to make up for contracting credit as an antidote to the D-process.