【每日晨读金融时报】US is slipping towards 1930s-style autocracy 附原文

Hedge fund bil­lion­aire Ray Dalio has warned that Don­ald Trump’s Amer­ica is drift­ing into 1930s-style auto­cratic polit­ics — and said other investors were too scared of the pres­id­ent to speak up.

The Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates founder told the Fin­an­cial Times that “gaps in wealth” were driv­ing “more extreme” policies in the US. “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.

State inter­ven­tion in the private sec­tor, such as Trump’s decision to take a 10 per cent stake in chip­maker Intel, was the sort of “strong auto­cratic lead­er­ship that sprang out of the desire to take con­trol of the fin­an­cial and eco­nomic situ­ation”, Dalio said.

His com­ments to the FT mark a rare cri­ti­cism of Trump by a prom­in­ent fin­an­cial fig­ure, des­pite mount­ing private alarm among some Wall Street investors at the pres­id­ent’s policies.

“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.”