Billionaire investor Ray Dalio gives the US debt deal a D grade, warning it doesn't solve the main problem
- The 11th-hour US debt-ceiling agreement "won't make much difference," according to Ray Dalio.
- Dalio gave a D grade to the deal as it doesn't address the problem of an ever-growing debt pile.
Ray Dalio isn't impressed by the debt-ceiling deal – and says the tentative agreement doesn't address the problem that the heavily indebted US government keeps borrowing more and more money.
The billionaire investor and Bridgewater Associates founder tweeted on Tuesday that President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's deal was "the best one could expect, though not good enough."
"Dealing with the problem of adding too much to a pile of debt that is already too large: Grade D," he added. "It won't make much difference."
Biden and McCarthy said on Saturday evening that they had agreed to suspend the debt ceiling until January 2025 while restricting spending in the 2024 and 2025 budgets.
If their deal passes through Congress, it promises to stave off a potentially catastrophic default that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had warned could occur in early June.
But lawmakers have acted 78 separate times to raise or extend borrowing limits since 1960, according to the US Treasury – and that's caused Dalio to slam the very concept of a debt ceiling in the past.
"We all know that there is no real debt limit because what is called a debt limit never actually limits the debt," he said in January.
"It's a farce that works like a bunch of alcoholics who write laws to enforce drinking limits," Dalio added. "When a limit is reached, they do a farcical negotiation that temporarily eliminates the limit which allows them to have the next drinking binge until they reach the next limit at which time they go through the next farcical negotiation and continue to binge."
Dalio was more complimentary of Biden and McCarthy, praising their ability to find common ground on a deal despite opposition from within their own parties.
"The middle held together against the extremists in their parties," he wrote. "That's a big thing."
The legendary investor added that the two-year extension of the borrowing limit was a "sensible" policy, because it would prevent a debt-ceiling debate flaring up again during the 2024 election cycle.