DALIO: There's not going to be another 2008-style crash, but there will be 'a gradual noose tightening'
Ray Dalio, the founder of the world's largest hedge fund firm Bridgewater Associates, says investors shouldn't expect another crisis like that in 2008 - but that there is still going to be "a gradual noose tightening."
Dalio made the comments in an interview with Business Insider's global editor in chief Henry Blodget on The Bottom Line, Business Insider's new weekly business news show. You can watch the full interview here.
"It's not like 2007, 2008," Dalio said. "In 2008, we could project there was a lot of debt coming due all at one and that there wouldn't be an ability to pay for it and we were going to have a crisis, and we had that crisis. What is happening now when we do projections is an evolutionarily greater amount of squeezing as those obligations become due and they have to be paid, and they have to be increased, therefore money and credit."
Translation: Dalio is basically saying that the debt obligations coming due are going to be more gradual than what we saw in the previous crisis.
"If the economy doesn't get too hot or too cold, then it will be fine," Dalio added. "You have to worry about the economy getting too hot as much as you have to worry about it if were to get too cold."
Westport, Conn.-based Bridgewater managed about $103 billion in hedge fund assets as of midyear 2016, according to the HFI Billion Dollar Club ranking, making it the world's biggest hedge fund. The company manages about $150 billion total firmwide.