I have been reading Ray Dalio’s Economic Principles that can be downloaded from the internet. I came across this interesting topic on the different stages of countries evolvement. So I thought it is good to share. According to Dalio, there are 5 stages of economic conditions throughout the lifecycle of a typical empire. 1) countries are poor and think that they are poor Countries are poor with very low income. They have no savings and no debts to speak of. These countries are basically low cost producers that produce low value added goods. This will attract big foreign investments to tap on its highly cost effective production, even in the face of a risky political situation. The currency and capital market is undeveloped. Country will peg exchange rate to gold or some other currency (e.g. USD). It is also the time where they build up their foreign ...  ...