One of the world’s most prominent hedge fund billionaires has warned that rising inequality is turning the US into an autocratic state and condemned business leaders for failing to speak out against Donald Trump’s policies.
Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, said “gaps in wealth” and a collapse in trust were driving “more extreme” policies in the US.
Speaking to the Financial Times, the veteran financier said many western countries were affected by growing inequality, leading voters to turn increasingly to autocratic leaders.
“I think that what is happening now politically and socially is analogous to what happened around the world in the 1930-40 period,” he said.
“Classically, increased wealth and value gaps lead to increased populism of the right and populism of the left and irreconcilable differences between them that can’t be resolved through the democratic process.
“So democracies weaken and more autocratic leadership increases as a large percentage of the population wants government leaders to get control of the system to make things work well for them.”
Concerns about a significant rise in borrowing by the US government were well founded, said Dalio, who has long predicted a reckoning for economies that allow debts to rise.
In his books, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke: the Big Cycle, he has described how large annual spending deficits and unsustainable debt growth had brought the US economy to the brink of a debt crisis – a situation that had worsened over many years.
“The great excesses that are now projected as a result of the new budget will likely cause a debt-induced heart attack in the relatively near future,” he said. “I’d say three years, give or take a year or two.”
He also expressed alarm at Trump’s interference in the decisions of the central bank and the buying of shares in corporations to further his “Made in America” programme.
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The US president wants the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates in an effort to boost economic growth and combat rising unemployment. But the Fed’s chair, Jay Powell, has warned the president’s import tariff increases could push up prices with the effect that investors will sell US financial assets rather than see them devalued.
Dalio said attacks on the Fed “would undermine the confidence in the Fed defending the value of money and make holding dollar-denominated debt assets less attractive which would weaken the monetary order as we know it”.
“I am just describing the cause and effect relationships that are driving what is happening,” he said. “And by the way, during such times most people are silent because they are afraid of retaliation if they criticise.”
Dalio, who is worth about $19bn (£14bn), started Bridgewater in 1975 and built the firm over decades to manage about $170bn of investor funds, according to the latest filings.
