Loading ...From Zerohedge – The Top 500 Richest People In The World Lost $1.4 Trillion In 2022
I guess Zerohedge reads Goldtent. No sooner had I posted on the subject of the zero-point-one-percenters yesterday and there is a fresh article out on Bloomberg and Zerohedge on that exact same topic. Weird how that works. Maybe a coincidence. Anyway here it is for your reading pleasure. It seems the billionaires had a much rougher year than even I imagined. Especially Elon Musk. But that is nothing compared to how they will fare once the bond bubble bursts and a larger global default cycle gets underway. Just one or two more rate hikes and the gates of hell themselves will open up on the marketplace (or so I imagine! LOL)
Interesting…
In the top 500 billionaires, on average they each lost $2.8 billion.
WOW!
Forbes provided a list of 2,668 billionaires from around the world and what their net worth was as of March 11, 2022.
https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
Another interesting tidbit is that there are roughly 22 million millionaires in the U.S.
https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/wealth/how-many-millionaires-are-in-the-us/
If we want to start fixing this world we need to seriously consider an absolute wealth cap. Maximum one billion dollars for example. The problem is that some very ignorant people have too much money and not enough brains to realize the damage they are causing. Other are pure evil incarnate. The solution is to take away their cash pile just for starters then tax their foundations vigorously. When we have reached the point that rich selfish individuals can dictate policy on a global scale then we have reached the end of the road. Its time for the pendulum to swing back the other way and democratize that wealth pile for the greater good.
Mostly the losses are equities as in stock price declines. The real pain hits if debt markets go tits up and/or property prices tumble on a sustained basis. I mean a real monetary conflagration or bond bust will strip many more trillions from the wealth levels of those at the top of the pyramid. The process we see today has only foreshadowed what might be. I suspect markets make another ramp higher though and push D day off to sometime in the late 2020’s. The game has not ended quite yet. But its to the benefit of people all over the world to see billionaire wealth evaporate. Bill Gates alone has contributed more than 600 million dollars to that detestable organization known as WHO or the World Health Organization (see chart). I think it should be clear that his penchant for throwing money at such organizations will cool considerably once his net worth falls. In the meantime, maybe someone smart out there can start talking about new laws to start taxing foundations or removing the tax-exempt status. Wealth taxes were brought up by AOC and others in the past. Flat rate taxes on net worth should be on the table. Nobody needs a billion dollars to begin with let alone someone who is clearly bent on harming or killing members of the public.
We might just welcome the day that markets finally break and a new depression starts.
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/gates-foundation-donations-to-who-nearly-match-those-from-us-government
“Mostly the losses are equities as in stock price declines. The real pain hits if debt markets go tits up and/or property prices tumble on a sustained basis.”
The uber rich keep most of their wealth in bonds.
That’s why the central banks over the years are always in such a hurry to bail out distressed debt holders.
Total debt exceeds $300 Tr. The wealthy see that debt as ASSETS, yielding income (esp if leveraged). In 2022, bonds had their worst year since ’49, some say since 1789. (Unless your name is Barry and you’ve lost another shot at HOF). In any event bond losses likely eclipsed equity losses in the aggregate because Bonds are 3/4 of total Paper Wealth. If Yurp Elite (old money) are the center of that, you can see how J-Po may have decided to change his tune along Luongo Lines.
Yes Pedro, you are of course correct. Thanks for pointing that out. Bonds may have peaked back in March 2020 on a secular basis however it was not actually until this week that I realized they were probably not going to recover. I am behind the times I guess. Yes the drop has been gut wrenching for many. And now it looks like it will get a whole lot worse fairly soon as a major support is going to be broken. When I think of the 30’s bond bust though its the sovereigns failures that always comes to mind. All debt is not created equal and some of it became so toxic back then that it went precisely to zero.
That is my reference point for what I call a bond bubble bust. Its as real as it gets and there is no coming back since only a financial reset can fix it. Back then bonds peaked in early 1928, almost two years before the stock market hit its own top on October 1929. We actually have a similar setup today where bonds peaked in March 2020 and the DOW peaked in January 2022, a difference of 22 months. I suppose in retrospect I should have seen the similarities but you know, the market has a way to blind our good sense sometimes.
We still have not seen the onset of a sovereign debt cycle though. Its coming but in theory there is time to avoid the worst pain if you are bloated with developing nation debts. The thing is I actually believe the Fed is trying to engineer a China collapse with its rate policy. Like us they are pickled in debt and plenty of it will never be paid back. Not by the many African and Third World nations who took development loans from them either. Back in the Depression there were no less than 29 countries that defaulted. Most of them during 1932 and 1933. It covered almost all South America. I wonder who will be on the list this next time around.