Pray, cast your eyes upon the antics of the modern financier! Mr. Ray Dalio, a gentleman of considerable means and the mastermind behind the vast Bridgewater concern, has seen fit to play the oracle. With the air of a man observing a slow-motion carriage crash, he warns us that the United States of America is hurtling toward a debt crisis of most catastrophic proportions within a mere three years.

Imagine, if you will, that the American Government were not a sovereign entity, but a mere Joint-Stock Company—perhaps a firm of solicitors or a textile mill. Mr. Dalio suggests that their interest payments alone would amount to some eleven trillion dollars! Such a sum represents two hundred per cent of their annual revenue. Any common merchant or honest tradesman would be cast into the debtors' prison for such an absurdity, yet these gentlemen in Washington continue to treat the national treasury as if it were an inexhaustible gold mine.

"I believe—though I may be mistaken, as all prophets are—that the crash shall arrive in three years' time," declares the gentleman, provided the current course of profligacy is maintained. It appears the Americans are spending forty per cent more than they acquire; a feat of financial alchemy that would make any street-corner swindler blush with envy.

In his latest tome, Principles for Dealing with the Debt Cycle, Mr. Dalio writes with a shudder that the risks are "extremely high." He speaks of refinancing and borrowing with the dread of a man watching a house of cards tremble in a gale. To his mind, the government has reached a point of no return—a state where the bills are so mountainous that no amount of ink can hide the deficit.

Indeed, the records from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis confirm this comedy of errors. By March of 2026, the national debt had swelled by nearly three trillion dollars, surpassing thirty-nine trillion in total. One wonders where they keep the ledgers for such a sum!

Mr. Dalio further predicts that such fiscal madness shall lead to social strife and political quarrels, perhaps culminating in the elections of 2028. He envisions a landscape of widening gaps between the opulent and the destitute, all while the great American machine grinds to a halt for want of a few honest shillings.