The guy running the world's biggest hedge fund doesn't sound optimistic about U.S. politics

The founder of the world’s largest hedge fund says the current political setup looks a lot like the chaotic, pre-World War II era of the 1930s.

Ray Dalio, chairman and chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, laid out his concerns in a new public post to LinkedIn on Monday.

In doing so, he highlighted growing economic divisions in the country, “saying it seems to me that we are now economically and socially divided and burdened in ways that are broadly analogous to 1937.”

He’s not wrong. Since the financial crisis hit, economists have been highlighting the fact that levels of income and wealth inequality in the U.S. are back to where they were during the early 20th century. The share of income going to the top 1 percent of earners was 38.6 percent as of 2014, within reach of the 40 percent threshold for the first time since 1939.

And the share of income going to the top 10 percent of earners reached a record 50.5 percent in 2015. The previous high in that yardstick, which includes all items reported on income tax returns before deductions, was 49.3 percent in 1928.

For the record, it might be worth noting that the large paychecks of the financial sector, including hedge fund managers such as Dalio, are responsible for a large chunk of the rise in inequality. Dalio, whose firm manages about $160 billion of investor money, writes that he’s “not encouraged” by how political conflict is being handled these days, in remarks that effectively expanded upon an earlier post in which he decried the global rise of populism. His latest comments, however, connected politics more directly to the economy and markets — his more typical turf as a money manager.

“Politics will probably play a greater role in affecting markets than we have experienced any time before in our lifetimes,” Dalio wrote.

He added that he was continuing “to closely watch how conflict is handled while tactically reducing our risk to it not being handled well.” His firm has recently increased its holdings of gold, a classic safe-haven bet around Wall Street.