Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio attended a Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert in Singapore, and posted a selfie from the packed venue along with a caption explaining why he thought the megastar should be the next president of the United States.

“@TaylorSwift for President!” the Bridgewater Associates founder Dalio wrote Thursday on Instagram.

“I just saw her at her concert in Singapore and realized that she can bring together Americans and people in most countries much better than either of the candidates, and that bringing people together is the most important thing,” Dalio wrote.

“Watching this concert with people from all over the world made me and them feel good and connected and reminded me how powerful that universal culture is,” he added. “Wouldn’t it be great if we had two candidates who could lead that culture and make smart leadership decisions too?”

While the post was likely made in jest, politicians and pundits know all too well of the record-breaking Grammy award winning singer’s powerful influence and enormous fan base.

Dalio later tweeted an update, elaborating on his frame of mind when he made the first post, and explaining it.

“Re: my Taylor Swift for president! comments, no I wasn’t drunk (though obviously I need to work on my selfies) and yes it was a joke, which is a half-truth,” Dalio wrote in the post on the social media site X.

“The half that’s true is that I think she can bring people together a lot better than either of the presidential candidates and bringing people together is one of the most important things a president should do.”

Swift’s get-out-the-vote efforts have previously spurred tens of thousands of young people to register to vote in a single day.

And the reputation she gained supporting Joe Biden’s campaign against former President Donald Trump that year have fostered right-wing conspiracy theories that she’s being deployed as a tool of the Democrats or even the Pentagon and CIA for this year’s presidential race.

While some Republican lawmakers and television pundits suggest Swift is part of a masterminded plot to achieve the Biden administration’s endgame, her fans have replied with “you need to calm down.” Swift has not made any endorsements for the 2024 election, but encouraged her 283 million Instagram followers to vote in a post on Tuesday for the Super Tuesday primaries.

Dalio, who turned Bridgewater into the world’s largest hedge fund, has previously stressed what he believes is the need for a more centrist approach to American politics. Many voters have not expressed happiness at the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch, bracing for a potentially cruel summer and fall campaign season as the contenders’ bad blood risks stoking further polarization in the country’s politics.

“What we need is a very strong middle,” Dalio said at a financial forum in November.

“We have irreconcilable differences by sides that will not accept losing.”

He said at the time that he saw former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, as the most promising candidate. Perhaps he now hopes Swift will fill in the blank space left by Haley’s recent departure from the race.

The Eras Tour is the most profit-generating concert tour in history, spanning 152 shows in five continents over 21 months.

Since launching her tour, Swift has become a billionaire and boosted the economies of numerous cities and states, surpassing many forecasters’ wildest dreams. The U.S. Federal Reserve in 2023 cited her concerts as providing significant economic boosts to American cities, and some analysts estimated that by October of that year, the shows and subsequent gold rush of travel and spending by fans had added $5.7 billion to the U.S. economy.

In Singapore alone, six consecutive days of concerts are estimated to have added between $225 million to $300 million to the city-state’s economy in the first quarter of this year, according to a survey of economists published by Bloomberg.

As concerns mount over rising interest rates and inflation levels, billionaire investor Ray Dalio says he prefers to hold cash for now, not bonds.

“I don’t want to own debt, you know, bonds and those kinds of things,” the founder of Bridgewater Associates said when asked how he would deploy capital in today’s investment environment.

“Temporarily, right now, cash I think is good … and the interest rates are fine. I don’t think [it] will be sustained that way,” Dalio told an audience at the Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore on Thursday.

Dalio’s comments come as the yield on the 30-day U.S. Treasury bill climbs above 5% while investors can get 4% on certificates of deposit and high-yield savings accounts.

Dalio says the biggest mistake that most investors make is “believing that markets that performed well are good investments, rather than more expensive.”

When asked how a new industry watcher should deploy capital, Dalio’s advice was: Be in the right geographies, diversify, pay attention to the implications of disruptions and pick asset classes that are creating new technologies and using them “in the best possible way.”

Touching on how to address the rising global debt, the hedge fund manager pointed out that when debt accounts for a substantial share of a country’s economy, the situation “tends to compound and accelerate … because you have to have interest rates that are high enough for the creditor and not so high that they are harming the debtor.”

“We’re at that turning point of acceleration. But the real problem comes when individuals or investors don’t hold the bonds, because it comes as a supply-demand, one man’s debts or another man’s assets,” he explained.

Dalio cautioned that investors will sell their bonds if they are not receiving real interest rates that are high enough.

“The supply-demand [imbalance] isn’t just the amount of new bonds. It’s the issue of ‘do you choose to sell the bonds?'” he explained.

When there’s a sell-off in bonds, prices fall and yields rise, as they have an inverse relationship. As a result, borrowing costs will increase and drive up inflationary pressure, thereby posing an uphill task for central banks.

“When the interest rates go up, the central bank then has to make a choice: Do they let them go up and have the consequences of that, or do they then print money and buy those bonds? And that has inflationary consequences,” Dalio explained.

“We’re seeing that dynamic happen now. I personally believe that the bonds longer term are not a good investment,” he stressed.

SINGAPORE — Political scandals are rare in Singapore. The city-state has long touted its clean government and incorruptible image to bolster its standing as a leading financial hub in Asia to attract foreign investors.

But the Southeast Asian nation is now caught up in a series of high profile incidents that has entangled its political elite.

This is the “most severe crisis” facing Singapore as the latest events “have and could further erode the public’s trust and confidence” in the government, Eugene Tan, an associate professor of law at Singapore Management University, told CNBC.

“The ruling party is now looking vulnerable as it never did in recent memory,” he added. “It now has a mountain to climb. How it recovers will matter immensely.”

In the latest blow, the political crisis deepened after the sudden resignations of two lawmakers, including the Speaker of Parliament, over an affair this week. Both were members of the ruling People’s Action Party, that has governed Singapore since 1959.

The revelation came just days after authorities said cabinet minister S. Iswaran and a business leader in Singapore were involved in a high-profile corruption probe by the anti-graft agency.

“These are severe reputational hits to the PAP government that had long prided itself for governing with honesty, integrity, and probity. In turn, Singapore’s reputation and standing is impacted too,” said SMU’sTan.

The spate of events “coming in rapid succession does make a dent on the image of the ruling party,” further noted Tan Ern Ser, associate professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore.

This is especially true, given that “being squeaky clean is one of the key pillars of the PAP brand,” he added.

On Monday, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he decided the incumbent speaker of the Singapore’s Parliament Tan Chuan Jin “had to go.”

The decision came after he received information that Tan and another PAP lawmaker Cheng Li Hui had continued in their “inappropriate relationship” even after the prime minister advised them to end their relationship in February.

In Singapore, politicians are held to a much higher standard since the ruling party’s “whole basis of its political legitimacy” has been built on “clean and incorrupt governance,” SMU’s Tan told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”

What the government does now is critical, he added.

“It has to go beyond damage control to renewing or even purging the system of its inadequacies, blind spots, and frailties,” said Tan. “This is the surest way to avoid withering trust and confidence.”

The prime minister’s office did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Last week, Singapore’s transport minister S. Iswaran and prominent hotel tycoon Ong Beng Seng, were arrested before being released on bail, in the country’s most serious corruption probe in nearly four decades.

Both men are currently assisting with the investigation, Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau revealed.

Singapore’s government officials are among the world’s highest paid, as the country seeks to discourage corruption and attract the best talent. Ministers are paid about 1.1 million Singapore dollars ($822,000) a year, according to the Public Service Division’s website.

The political “drama” that has unfolded comes as “a real surprise, a shock perhaps,” to Singaporeans, said Felix Tan, associate lecturer at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Singaporeans, who are not used to political scandals, have taken to memes to express themselves. Social media discussions and commentaries in the local media have also delved into the implications for the country.

While the latest spate of incidents don’t “portray a failure of the system,” it certainly acts as a “test for the government” to re-examine its own high standards, said NTU’s Tan.

When similar scandals happen to the opposition, “the PAP would take the moral high ground and insist that the opposition do the right thing,” the lecturer said.

“And yet, what these cases have shown is that the PAP are doing the exact same things that they urged others not to do,” he said, adding the government has to be “more transparent” in its dealings with the people.

The corruption scandal came on the heels of a public scrutiny over two other ministers who rented state-owned bungalows for their personal use. Questions were raised on whether they were paying less than market rates for the properties.

In June, a government review found no evidence of corruption or criminal wrongdoing over the matter.

“I think much depends on how the government addresses these fallouts,” said Tan from NUS. “I believe the state institutions are still strong, and the guardrails would be reinforced in the process of responding to these challenges.”

The prime minister sought to quickly control the damage, emphasizing the government’s zero-tolerance on corruption to allay public concerns.

“High standards of propriety and personal conduct, together with staying clean and incorrupt, are the fundamental reasons Singaporeans trust and respect the PAP, and give us their mandate to form the government,” Lee said Monday.

But he also acknowledged, “No system can be completely infallible.”

“Sometimes things cluster up, but we make sure we put them right, and I hope I put them right and we will be able to set the right tone for a long time to come,” Lee added. 

The political fallout comes at a delicate time for Singapore, which is navigating a tricky leadership transition. The prime minister is seeking to hand over power to the next generation of leaders in the near future.

“The longer the delay, it will raise a lot of concerns about whether the next generation leaders are ready,” said SMU’s Tan.

At this week’s briefing, Lee said he has no plans to call an immediate election, despite the vacant seats in Parliament. Singapore will hold its presidential election in the next few months and general elections aren’t due until 2025.

“We are in the second half of the present government’s term, we just opened Parliament recently,” he said. “We have a full agenda for this term, we’re working at it and that’s what we will focus on.”

Tan from NUS said that if elections were held now, “the negative impact on the PAP’s electoral performance would be significant.”

With the government facing pressures from “persistently high inflation,” including rising concerns over home affordability, the ruling party needs to close ranks and “stay on track” in order to achieve “a credible performance,” he added.

While it’s tough to gauge whether the scandals will hurt the ruling party and allow the opposition to make inroads, “there will be a heavy political price to be paid for sure,” noted SMU’s Tan.

“How much is the political cost? We don’t know at this stage,” he added.

“At the very minimal, it could cause the element of doubt. So voters could be more prepared to look at what other parties have to offer.”

Regaining the confidence of people will be tough for the government, he added. “Rebuilding trust is demanding. It will also take time but there isn’t much time to next general election.”

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, the city-state’s financial regulator and central bank, has named Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong as chairman of its board of directors effective July 8.

Wong, who is the country’s finance minister, will replace Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who held the role for 12 years since May 2011, the release said.

Shanmugaratnam announced last month that he will be running in presidential elections in Singapore, which must be held by mid-September. The president role is largely symbolic and ceremonial.

Wong, who was deputy chairman of MAS since June 2021, will serve as chairman until May 31, 2026, according to the press release. He previously served as a member of the MAS Board from June 2011 to August 2016.

Singapore’s Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong will be appointed deputy chairman of the MAS Board for the same period, from July 8 to May 31, 2026.

Speaking to CNBC in February, he said Singapore faces a challenge of a “delicate balancing act” when setting its government budget for the year as the economy grapples with global slowdown and weakened demand.

Market watchers are closely monitoring if Singapore could enter a technical recession after its economy contracted in the first quarter.

Barclays senior regional economist Brian Tan said, “Our tracking estimate implies a 0.3% quarter-on-quarter decline in Q2, extending Q1’s 0.4% contraction — implying a shallow technical recession.”

Singapore’s industrial production fell for a second month in May by 3.9% month-on-month after seeing a decline of 1.6% in April.

Despite the slowdown, Barclays does not expect the central bank to make changes to its monetary policy any time soon, the economist said in a June 26 note.

“Our long-standing view remains that the Monetary Authority of Singapore is unlikely to further tighten its FX policy settings this year — including via unscheduled inter-meeting adjustments in the near term,” Tan wrote.

Singapore’s Straits Times index saw a bounce shortly after the announcement, paring earlier losses and last traded 0.33% higher.