Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, warned on Tuesday of a “significant risk” of a U.S. recession in 2020.
“It’s going to be globally a slow up. It’s not just the United States; it’s Europe; and it’s China and Japan,” the billionaire investment titan said Tuesday in an interview on CNBC”s “Squawk Box.”
“Where we are in the later [economic] cycle and the inability of central banks to ease as much, that’s the cauldron that will define 2019 and 2020,” said Dalio, co-CIO and co-chairman of Bridgewater Associates.
Bond yields are signaling the Federal Reserve should not increase interest rates anymore, Dalio said in the interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “If it rises faster than that, I think we’re going to have another problem.”
The Fed, after its fourth hike of 2018 in December, had signaled two more rate increases for 2019. However, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell earlier this month said central bankers will be “patient” given continued muted inflation.
The Federal Open Market Committee meets again next week. No move is expected from the current benchmark fed funds short-term rate range of 2.25 to 2.50 percent.
“I think there is the possibility that you extend the equilibrium in a certain way where you have an easier monetary policy … and you grow in a fairly slower way and that you don’t have a classic recession for a while,” Dalio said.
Dalio said earlier Tuesday during a Davos panel discussion that “the next downturn in the economy worries me the most.” He also said he’s concerned about “greater political and social antagonism” around the globe.
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