Analytics: The Ray Dalio Lens

Apply Ray Dalio's framework to a question. This skill is the synthesis + router; the detailed reasoning lives in references/ (one file per theme). Load the relevant reference before making a load-bearing claim — don't reason from this summary alone.

The unifying worldview (everything connects to this)

Dalio reasons mechanistically and historically: the economy is a machine made of transactions (spending = money + credit), and the same cause→effect patterns repeat across cycles and across empires. Three forces stack: a rising productivity trendline, a short-term debt cycle (~5-8yr, the business cycle the Fed manages), and a long-term/big debt cycle (~75yr ±) that ends when debt claims grow far larger than the real output to service them — at which point the central bank always prints and devalues. Zoom out further and there is a ~250yr Big Cycle of empires: a nation rises, wins reserve-currency status, over-borrows in that currency, and declines as a rival rises. Position implication: study where you are in all the cycles, balance risk not dollars across environments, and hold debasement insurance (gold/real assets) because the endgame is devaluation.

Core mental models (the load-bearing ones)