General Motors Corp.'s (NYSE: GM) problems are well known: declining growth, huge debts, and enormous contingent liabilities (such as for retirement and health care benefits).

Yes, it also sounds like the U.S. economy, huh?

Well, this is the gloomy assessment from Ray Dalio, who is the chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates. A few years ago, he warned about the overleveraged economy. More importantly, he positioned his portfolio for the New Reality.

In fact, in 2008 the Bridgewater Pure Alpha 1 fund was up 8.7% and the #2 vintage increased 9.4%.

So, what's is his thinking now? Unfortunately, it's fairly gloomy (this is according to a great interview in this week's Barron's, which is a paid publication).

Bloomberg News reports that hedge fund Bridgewater Associates has estimated that the total write-downs from the current credit crisis will total $1.6 trillion. With $400 billion in write-downs taken so far, this $1.6 trillion estimate would put us about a quarter of the way through the crisis. So far, banks have raised $321 billion in capital to buffer those write-downs.

And Teddy Forstmann, a private equity veteran, agrees with this assessment. In an interview from Saturday's Wall Street Journal, he said the current credit crisis is the worst he's seen. As he said, the problem started after 9/11 with the Fed giving away money at negative real interest rates. This created so much cash that banks could not find ways to lend it out where risk and reward were in balance.

So they created new ones which mis-priced risk. These include loan syndication -- in which banks originate loans and take a fee for selling them to someone else -- and securitization -- in which banks packages lots of loans as securities and sell those to hedge funds and other institutional investors. Unfortunately, these only work when the prices of the underlying assets are going up.

Bloomberg News reports that on August 17th, in the midst of the August credit crunch, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sought the advice of Citigroup (NYSE: C) Chairman and Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, mortgage backed securities inventor Lewis Ranieri and hedge fund honcho Ray Dalio of $32.1 billion Bridgewater Associates. Kenneth H. Thomas, a Wharton lecturer, obtained the information on Bernanke's calls and contacts under the Freedom of Information Act.

Although there are no details of what Bernanke discussed with these investment luminaries, I applaud him for making the effort. One of the things that helped Alan Greenspan to make decisions was the network of business and finance leaders which he had created when he headed his own consulting firm prior to his move to Washington. Such real world contacts are particularly important for Bernanke to develop given his academic background.

It would be very helpful for investors to know how Bernanke makes his decisions. But this little glimpse into his schedule reveals an obvious point -- it would be very difficult to believe that anyone Bernanke spoke with would not have obtained very valuable information from which they could profit. And we'll never know whether Rubin, Ranieri, or Dalio did just that.

The rest of us can always eat cake.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.