The $160bn Bridgewater hedge fund produced a chart last year about modern politics that was alarming for at least two reasons. First, the number crunching revealed that the proportion of votes garnered by populist, anti-establishment candidates in the west, such as US President Donald Trump, France’s Marine Le Pen and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK Labour party, exploded from 7 per cent in 2010 to 35 per cent in 2017.
Second, the chart showed that the only time an increase of this magnitude occurred in recent memory was in the 1930s, when another financial crisis led to populism. That time, the swing prefigured the rise of nationalism and led to war. Could history repeat itself?
The global elite increasingly fears so. The World Economic Forum on Wednesday released its annual survey of the main concerns of its members.