Ray Dalio is the CEO of Bridgewater Associates, which is the largest hedge fund in the world.

Despite running a massive hedge fund, Dalio maintains a tight lid on secrecy. Therefore, when he does speak, it is quite a treat for people in the financial industry.

Dalio spoke for over an hour on the economy this Wednesday. Lucky for most people, he did not use hard-to-understand and complex financial terms. He spoke in very easy-to-understand English. While he talked about a variety of topics, there was one in particular that is sadly important for readers to know about.

Editor's Note: You Owe It to Yourself to Know What Obama and Bernanke Are Hiding From Americans

Dalio talked about the current deleveraging process going on in the United States.

Dalio stated, “We were through a car crash and we destroyed large parts of the system. We were in the intensive care unit and we have largely created a healing.”

However, he noted challenges from abroad and from the coming U.S. fiscal cliff — the combined spending cuts and tax increases that could put the U.S. economy back in a recession.

Even if the political challenges are solved, as are the problems abroad, the United States is going to take a while to recover, because we are still deleveraging.

Deleveraging is when people start to reign in debt and personal spending and save money. This process will continue for a long time, since people during the past decade or two, took out loans on homes they could not afford, cars they could not afford and education. Until we get back to lower levels of household debt, the United States will be in a long, slow recovery. And that assumes everything else goes well.

Additionally, as I pointed out in last week’s article, it will likely take years to get back to any normal level of employment.

There is something for Americans to think about. Besides being a disaster on foreign policy, as demonstrated in Libya and Egypt this week, it might be better for President Barack Obama to win. His attempt to increase taxes during an extremely weak economic recovery will completely wreck the U.S. economy. Spending cuts would hurt the economy in the short term, but would likely help in the long run. Obama has a plan that is a recipe for disaster, which just increases spending and taxes.

However, Mitt Romney can do very little to stop the deleveraging process. He probably would be much better for the economy and on foreign policy, but American spending makes up 65 percent of gross domestic product. There is little he can do about that.

If it was not for the fact that Obama is a total failure on many fronts, it would probably be best to sit out this election and get a Republican in after the deleveraging is hopefully over in 2016.

Editor's Note: You Owe It to Yourself to Know What Obama and Bernanke Are Hiding From Americans