
Steven Bartlett with Ray Dalio
A fortune measured in shares is not cash available to repay a loan. That gap explains how a technology boom can become a spiral of forced selling.
The current surge in artificial intelligence investment exhibits the classic signs of an economic bubble, where unsustainable enthusiasm creates large amounts of debt that can unwind sharply when tightening monetary policy forces overleveraged investors to liquidate their assets.
Global economies operate through recurring macroeconomic cycles lasting roughly eighty years, characterized by initial prosperity that eventually gives way to heavy debt accumulation, internal political strife, and a painful restructuring of the global monetary system.
Technological revolutions tend to widen the wealth gap by replacing human physical and cognitive labor with machines, disproportionately rewarding capital owners while displacing everyday workers and exacerbating domestic political divisions.