Most people are shocked by what’s unfolding in the world right now. I’m not. I’ve seen this movie before.
As a global macro investor for over 50 years, I’ve had to study the cause-and-effect relationships that drive history in order to place my bets. What I found is that all monetary orders, political orders, and geopolitical orders rise, evolve, and collapse in a repeating pattern I call “the Big Cycle”—typically lasting about 75 years, give or take about 30.
I believe that the times ahead will be radically different from what most people have gotten used to—that they will be more like the tumultuous pre-1945 era than what we have experienced since the end of World War II.
We Are Now in Stage 5
In my book Principles for Dealing With the Changing World Order, I described six stages of the Big Cycle. Stage 6 is the breakdown—the period of great disorder. Stage 5 is what immediately precedes it. That is where we are now.
