The Rich are Getting Richer - Ireland and the World ( Independant and Forbes Lists)

[C. Flower]

Two "Rich Lists" have been published this week. First was the Forbes list of Billionaires. You will be pleased that there are a lot more of them, a lot more spread out. Ten years ago 1 in 2 billionaires was American, now its only 1 in 3.

http://blogs.forbes.com/luisakroll/2011/03/09/the-worlds-billionaires-2011-inside-the-list/

In Ireland, the 300 richest are said to have €6.7 billion more between them than this year, mainly due to a rise in Share prices.

http://www.independent.ie/business/the-rich-just-got-richer-top-300-now-have-euro57bn-2577762.html (http://www.independent.ie/business/the-rich-just-got-richer-top-300-now-have-euro57bn-2577762.html)

Such a comfort to know that some people are still able to *Party*




The 2011 Billionaires List (http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/) breaks two records: total number of listees (1,210) and combined wealth ($4.5 trillion). This horde surpasses the gross domestic product of Germany, one of only six nations to have fewer billionaires this year. BRICs led the way: Brazil, Russia, India and China produced 108 of the 214 new names. These four nations are home to one in four members, up from one in ten five years ago. Before this year only the U.S. had ever produced more than 100 billionaires. China now has 115 and Russia 101.

Atop the heap is Mexico’s Carlos Slim Helu (http://www.forbes.com/profile/carlos-slim-helu), who added $20.5 billion to his fortune, more than any other billionaire. The telecom mogul, who gets 62% of his fortune from America Movil, is now worth $74 billion and has pulled far ahead of his two closest rivals. Bill Gates (http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates), No. 2, and Warren Buffett (http://www.forbes.com/profile/warren-buffett), No. 3, both added a more modest $3 billion to their piles and are now worth $56 billion and $50 billion, respectively. Gates, who now gets 70% of his fortune from investments outside of Microsoft (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=msft&tab=searchtabquotesdark), has actually been investing in the Mexican stock market and has holdings in Mexican Coke bottler Femsa and Grupo Televisa.




THE 300 richest people in Ireland (http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Ireland) are worth almost €57bn or more than the entire Libyan or Croatian economy. They've got much richer too, with close to €6.7bn added to their combined wealth over the last year, fuelled by roaring stock markets and huge increases in the price of oil and other commodities.
As revealed in the Sunday Independent Rich List 2011, Ireland (http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Ireland)'s richest man is Pallonji Mistry (http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Pallonji_Mistry), an Indian-born industrialist. His wife Patsi was born on Dublin (http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Dublin%2C_Ireland)'s Hatch Street and he took Irish citizenship in 2003. Mr Mistry's two sons and a daughter also have Irish citizenship. The bulk of his wealth comes from an 18.4 per cent stake in Tata -- India (http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/India)'s largest company, which has interests in cars, property, manufacturing, and chemicals. Mr Mistry's wealth jumped by €1.67bn last year and last week Forbes magazine (http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/Forbes_Magazine) ranked him as the 103rd richest person in the world.

Ireland now has 11 billionaires -- two more than last year. While Denis O'Brien, Dermot Desmond and the O'Reilly family have long been ranked in the billionaire class, we've also revalued Coolmore's John Magnier (http://searchtopics.independent.ie/topic/John_Magnier) and Glen Dimplex boss Martin Naughton and catapulted them into billionaire status

[Apjp]

:P on a slightly related topic as re. the communist party is it not time the country had one that actually ran in elections as a communist party through marxist economics? I hope to start an EPL/Economics, Politics, Law degree in DCU in 2 years after I finish this 1. If theres still none then, I'll try and start one up in what will be a huge political/economic degree class/course.

[C. Flower]

I'm amazed how little comment this thread got. Do people think that billionaires find their money growing on trees ?

It's all created by other peoples' work and as this market watch article says - there's a war on by the rich against the rest so they can make themselves richer. In the US, they are terming it a civil war, with extraordinary State of Emergency legislation being pushed through that strips people of civil rights in order to impoverish them and boost private profit.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-civil-war-erupts-led-by-super-rich-gop-2011-03-22?link=MW_story_popular


Wake up America. You are under attack. Stop kidding yourself. We are at war. In fact, we have been fighting this Civil War for a generation, since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981. Recently Buffett renewed the battle cry: The “rich class” is winning this war. Except most Americans still don’t realize they’re losing, don’t see the prize at stake.

What's happening in the US is also happening in Europe. We are told that times are harsh and that austerity is needed, but this is seen by the rich as an asset stripping opportunity and a chance to push wages right down to boost their profits. Small business in this is also picked off by corporations who have the borrowing power to ride out the economic crisis.


Yes, back in the heat of battle, in September 2008, Klein warned America: “Whatever the events of this week mean, nobody should believe the overblown claims that the market crisis signals the death of ‘free market’ ideology.” Then the meltdown went nuclear.
Klein warned: “Free market ideology has always been a servant to the interests of capital, and its presence ebbs and flows depending on its usefulness to those interests. During boom times, it’s profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate.”



But “when those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue.” Remember: A week later Paulson was on his knee, begging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for that $787 billion bailout, to save our incompetent Wall Street banks that caused the meltdown from certain bankruptcy.



“But rest assured,” continued Klein in September 2008, Reaganomics “ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize.”
And yes, America, this war strategy is happening thanks to General Buffett, the new GOP Congress and 16 aggressive anti-democracy GOP governors.
Escalation of new Civil War: GOP dictators killing democracy

After the 2010 election of these new GOP governors, the new Civil War escalated with a new phase of self-destructive “disaster capitalism,” thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision. Their strategy was first revealed in the Wisconsin dictator Scott Walker’s war against the unions. Then last week the GOP assault went nuclear.



Michigan’s GOP Gov. Rick Snyder signed the “much despised emergency financial manager legislation into law,” said local ABC news, labeling the law “draconic” for giving the governor new dictatorial powers to appoint “emergency financial managers … to run struggling cities and schools, including the ability to terminate union contracts.”



We learned of Snyder’s democracy-killing coup a week earlier when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow interviewed Naomi Klein. Maddow also exposed another particularly harsh tactic: Snyder’s $1.7 billion tax hikes against seniors and the poor. He was “not using it to close the budget gap. He is giving it away in the form of $1.8 billion in corporate tax cuts.”
Get it, folks? In the GOP governors new strategy escalating this Civil War, the GOP is robbing the poor to give to the rich.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Yes but we're not allowed by the rules of the form to outline or discuss the correct remedial action.

The only problem the rich and board rooms have is that they are massively outnumbered and have to live on the planet.

I think we're going to end up with terrorism against boardrooms and random attacks on the wealthy fairly shortly.

[Holly]

I'm amazed how little comment this thread got. ....

You shouldn't be; the general public already know about capitalist greed but we also know there is not a single thing we can do about it. The system is stacked against ordinary people.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Looks like Baader Meinhof were well ahead of their time.

[C. Flower]

You shouldn't be; the general public already know about capitalist greed but we also know there is not a single thing we can do about it. The system is stacked against ordinary people.

This isn't about greed. It's about a particular economic system that's based on private ownership and private profit. I don't think that this is particularly clear in peoples' minds or they wouldn't have tolerated it so long.

[Holly]

This isn't about greed. It's about a particular economic system that's based on private ownership and private profit. I don't think that this is particularly clear in peoples' minds or they wouldn't have tolerated it so long.

If "greed" is not the underlying raison d'etre of capitalism, what is?

[Griska]

This isn't about greed. It's about a particular economic system that's based on private ownership and private profit. I don't think that this is particularly clear in peoples' minds or they wouldn't have tolerated it so long.

Yes Cactus, but what has happened is that ideological arguments are now seen as impractical.
The narritive has cleverly been steered toward details and catchphrases which populate every debate, but which have no bearing on the bigger picture whatsoever.

"Burn the bondholders", "take the pain" etc.

I think the election was an opportunity missed. We ended up hearing such an amount of focus-group approved waffle and hubris that provide no solutions.

[C. Flower]

If "greed" is not the underlying raison d'etre of capitalism, what is?

Capitalism came into being as a development of the productive forces that were being held back by feudal society. Private ownership, the division of labour, the accumulation of capital that was then reinvested, credit, all enabled a huge growth in production. Life under capitalism, on average, became much better than life under feudalism, although there are very great inequalities. At this stage, we are so good at production that huge crises of overproduction are wrecking "economies" - the Irish construction bubble being one case in point. At the same time it has become more and more difficult to sustain profitability, due to intense competition and increasing costs of production. We need a system now for managing plenty, not for copperfastening inequality.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

One hedgefunder who is pretty much at the top of that sector in London and even represented the 'masters of the universe' at a House of Commons Select Committee meeting where that phrase came into public use has actually doubled his profits from last year to this year to £10billion.

The same nerdy little sociopath (in my opinion) was busy doing that thing of threatening to leave the UK if taxes were raised on the sector even though I knew for a fact that his hedgefund is offshored at the Cayman Islands and he's a non-dom.

So effectively any tax changes wouldn't have affected him or his partnership but still he was laying it on thick and desperately trying to create the impression in the public and political mind that his hedgefund contributed enormously to the country. It hardly contributes anything because his fund only employs a few people as admin and anybody above admin level is a non-dom.

So effectively someone who had no dog in the fight took it upon himself to carefully create a lie.

I know a bit about him from coming across him and his hedgefund in another sphere so it was interesting to see someone you know is lying-by-implication actually at it. And he is a classic small man, mathematically nerdy, socially extraordinarily boring but feral about pretending his yearly results equal the length of his penis.

I call them the Ford Capri gang because they remind me of small insecure men who bought Ford Capris in an effort to appeal to women and even out the field against guys who actually had a personality.

There are one or two flash boys in that sector but I have to say that they remind me mostly of the 'Revenge of the Nerds' types- quantitative analysts with math degrees from Imperial or Oxford/Cambridge and an obsession with mathematical modelling- I know for a fact that such hedgefunds actively recruit Quants from math departments and in fairness they are not so much eccentric as totally oblivious to the damage they cause in economies. Some of them don't care and I have a further identifier on them which I cannot get into for a number of reasons.

But basically they aren't sociopathic its just that the big money is an indicator to them where they stand in their peer group and if you've ever seen computer or math nerds competing against each other you'll know what I mean when I say these people are socially retarded. Highly intelligent but socially retarded- and some of them are just convinced that the rest of the world that doesn't understand mathematical modelling are 'untermensch'.

We really are into that kind of scenario.

[C. Flower]

One of the main reasons the rich have got richer is that they pay much less tax.

http://front.moveon.org/what-52-years-of-tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy-looks-like/?rc=tw.fol


http://front.moveon.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/EffectiveTaxRate_1995_2007.jpg

[whydontwe]

Yes CF...the rich could not survive (as rich)...if they were not 'legally' allowed to evade/avoid taxes by the politicians globally! Any wonder there is a world-wide movement (violent or otherwise) to baulk against these corrupt individuals?
What...do we wonder the poorest in the world 'see' when they observe stuff like "my super-sweet sixteen" and other garbage...reflecting how obscenely wealthy the 'west' is? G'night CF...gonna rest now.

[C. Flower]

The rich are still getting much richer...

http://wsm.ie/c/recession-wealthiest-individuals-increase-wealth


The “World Wealth Report 2011”, published by finance conglomerates Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, has shown that the amount of wealth held by the world’s wealthiest elite increased by almost 10% in 2010. The number of ‘High Net Worth Individuals’ (i.e. those with investable assets of over $1million) also rose last year – to 10.9 million.

The wealth of these individuals has risen to $42.7trillion, or an average of almost $4.3million each.

The report also reveals that the number of Ultra High Net Worth Individuals – those with over $30million to invest – increased by 10% to 103,000.

The report fails to point out that there are currently 925 million people in the world who cannot afford enough to eat.

[ang]

The rich will always get richer until the poorer people wake up and take their money back.

This Financial crisis has shown how the rich will alays be protected no matter what and until the ordinary people decide they are "not playing this game" anymore, then things will continue the same as always.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Justin put his finger on the reason why there is a sudden opening wealth gap in my opinion.

In the last ten years we've seen a dramatic increase in the power of private wealth funds hidden in havens such as the Caymans, Isle of Man, and the usual places such as Monaco, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

What has also happened is that there has been a lot of activity in terms of multilateral tax treaties whereby for example Ireland signs a tax treatment treaty with Austria or somewhere which allows tax accountants to move maybe 100million in and out of Austria and Ireland and creates a situation where there is a tax advantage and an actual profit available just by shifting capital through bank accounts in different jurisdictions.

What was previously available only quietly to corporations is now available as a strategy to Limited Liability Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies which is what most hedgefunds are incorporated as.

Essentially the wealthy have now corporatised their private wealth and are copying what corporations do in managing their cashflow so that it presents no profile to tax authorities but still manages to create profit just by moving in and out of markets.

Valartis were able to make a claim for Anglo Irish Bank Austria AG because the company was part of a group subject to the Irish bank guarantee- even though Valartis had no presence in the Irish market as at Sept 2008 when the guarantee was announced.

They were crowing about it in their annual report 2009. Bear in mind that it was a purely manipulative transaction as that subsidiary was liquid and in profit- yet still through accounting trickery just by buying that subsidiary Valartis qualified for a tax break as well as acquiring the assets of the company itself.

Private wealth management companies can do the same thing just by taking advantage of the Irish sandwich tax arrangements. Thats why there are so many small brass plaque operations in the IFSC.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Magnier, NcManus and Desmond could hypothetically have advised Sir Dead Leninhan to guarantee the Irish banks in order to hit the euro - no-one knows whether they had gone short on the Euro via Switzerland or Austria at the same time.

I'm not saying they did or have- I'm just saying that it is a bad idea to have tax exiles wandering around Leinster House giving economic advice. And that includes Goldman Sach's Peter Sutherland.

None of these people give a rubber shyte about Irish national interests- if they did they'd be paying tax there.

They do care what happens to their investments and bets in the markets.

[C. Flower]

The rich get richer in crashes as they can pick stuff up in fire sales.

[eanach1]

The best way for us to fight back is to not borrow money from the banks.

Apart from that, what else can we do collectively?

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

There are some advantages over the financial privateers. They tend to flock together for security.

In Ireland if there are assets sold such as forests to mates of mates then I suspect we might see those forests damaged in the same way as crops belonging to despised rackrenter absentee landlords were damaged in the Land Wars.

I'd like to see large strips of agricultural land bought up under a co-op system- perhaps the land on which the ghost estates were built and which will be rezoned back to agricultural land?

I know that some football clubs staved off developers interested in knocking down stadiums by selling rights to the pitch in small lots (£100) so that the developers lost interest as they had no way to persuade thousands of small time owners to part with something that meant more to them in terms of emotion than money.

Agricultural land may become a significant investment opportunity and I know some foreign banks with dud ghost estate properties are beginning to think along those lines.

Agriland is vastly overvalued at the moment in Ireland mainly because NAMA has false-floored the market but once the floor is hit then widespread buying of forestry suitable land or agriland in small shareholdings via specific vehicles such as co-ops or SPVs set up with clear rules to prevent speculators creating a bubble or buying them out may well turn out to be a both a good ethical and good financial investment.

It would keep land out of the hands of foreign speculators anyway. I'd buy a few blocks of shareholdings in agriland as long as the rezoning of ghost estates back to that use was part of the deal.

[Baron von Biffo]

I'm amazed how little comment this thread got. Do people think that billionaires find their money growing on trees ?

Unfortunately the answer to that bit is, no they don't.

Look at the last GE, look at the frenzy over Collier's bonus, look at the support for the judicial pay referendum - No evidence of any thinking at all.

[Baron von Biffo]

I think the election was an opportunity missed. We ended up hearing such an amount of focus-group approved waffle and hubris that provide no solutions.

The election was a case study in how to manipulate the voters.

The policies of the last government suited the wealthy so naturally they wanted to see them continued. A potential inconvenience was the fact that the people didn't much like those policies.

The solution? Whip up the mindless ABFF campaign. We no longer needed to take the trouble to think about the best way to vote, so long as we it wasn't FF we could be happy.

Obviously the big winner was going to be FG and since FG policy is identical to FFs the wealthy got the government they wanted and we got the government we deserve for our negligence.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I think that there is a backlash against the 'money for old rope' community Baron. You could have removed Collier from DAA the whole of last year and it would not have made an ounce of difference to its commercial success.

The same could be said for many semi-state board directors who simply turn up 8 times a year for some waffle in a boardroom and pick up 15K at the end of it. No commercial impact whatsoever apart from their CVs on a website.

It isn't people in boardrooms who make a company profitable it is the passing dynamics of the business sector they happen to be in.

People can damage a private business or add to its marketing and perhaps have a halo effect but in a business like the DAA how much of its income stream is guaranteed because it is a monopoly?

In which case why is Collier due a large bonus? Because he was nice enough not to actually damage the business?

[C. Flower]

Vincent Browne wrote about this in the SBP last Sunday.

http://www.sbpost.ie/commentandanalysis/the-superrich-wallow-while-the-rest-of-us-suffer-57072.html

Our average GNP has fallen from 127.5 % of the EU average in 2007 to 102.5% in 2010. This contraction has affected the incomes of a large minority (unemployed, or with lower profits) disproportionately but some people are actually better off.



What is spectacular about Ireland is the extent to which our relative per capita income declined, compared with other EU states. In 2007, our gross national income per capita was 127.5 per cent of the EU average.

Last year, it was 102.5 per cent, a collapse of 25 per cent. In Britain, the percentage drop was only 2.1. In Greece, the drop was just 2.6 and, in Portugal, only 1.8 in comparison with the EU average.

In 2007, we were one of the high flyers, with our per capita income at 127 per cent of the EU average. Only the Netherlands (134.6) and Sweden (127.9) were higher, along with Luxembourg, of course (221).

And then, what a crash. By far the biggest crash in all Europe, by some distance.

They said it couldn’t be done. But compared with other EU countries, Ireland is certainly very rich. For instance, the poorest country, Bulgaria, was at 42 per cent of the EU average. Latvia was at 52 (the figure for 2009). But, interestingly, Ireland was higher than both Italy (98.2) and Spain (99.8).

The two other countries in the bailout, Greece and Portugal, had ratings of 86.5 and 78.0, so again, we are substantially richer on average than either of these countries. Richer, that is, on average.

For many years, we were the most unequal of most of these countries and, although there may have been some adjustments, there is still reason to believe we are still one of the most unequal countries in the OECD (ie the developed world).

The efforts of Richard Bruton to cut the incomes of some of the lowest paid people in our society will certainly go a long way towards ensuring that we maintain our high rating on the inequality scale.

The richest are now known, not as the super-rich, but as high net worth individuals (HNWIs), and the super superrich are known as ultrahigh net worth individuals (UHNWIs).

The good news is that there are more of these boyos (for they are nearly all boyos) now than there were a year ago, and they are getting richer and richer.

According to the Capge mini and Merrill Lynch global wealth management report for 2011,the number of HNWIs increased by 8.3 per cent to 10.9 million and HNWI financial wealth has grown by 9 per cent to reach $42.7 trillion.

The global population of UHNWIs grew by 10.2 per cent last year and its wealth by 11.5 per cent. According to the report, the single largest HNWI segment in the world is in the US, with its 3.1 million HNWIs accounting for 28.6 per cent of the global HMWI population.

The number of HNWIs in Europe grew by 6.3 per cent last year to 3.1 million and, between them, they had wealth of over €8,000,000,000,000 (€8 trillion).

Those boyos could sort out the EU debt crisis between them in a jiffy, and still have lots and lots of loot left over. AUS study published last Sunday in the Washington Post showed that, over the last 35 years, the share of national income taken by the best-paid 0.1 per cent of the population quadrupled from 2.5 per cent in 1975 to 10.4 per cent in 2008.

It found that 15,000 people had average annual incomes of $27 million annually.

The principal drivers of this were chief executives of large companies, most of them unknown to the general public.

Just like here. And we have convinced ourselves there is no alternative to this absurdity.

[jinnyjoe]

Well I have always asked myself why these billionaires need all this money, does it make them happy, maybe, but can they not see the injustice in the world? Why should one person have much more money than they will ever spend in a life time while others starve? Also why do people who are close to very very wealthy people say, "Oh but they work very hard", most of us work very very hard, this is a completely ridiculous statement as if everyone else who earns a minimum wage or less is bone idle and lazy.

The simple answer is greed and selfish greed, and donating a very small proportion of their wealth to their chosen well documented charities really doesn't exonerate (??) their greed. I was asked today what would I do if I won the €120 million Lotto, I answered, well first I'd be very surprised because I haven't bought a ticket and secondly I wouldn't like to win that much money because I genuinely feel that there would be a price to pay, maybe with the health or welfare of my family (bad karma so to speak), so I'd rather have my lovely family thank you very much they're worth far more to me than any money! and I'll continue working very very hard for very little money thank you very much :D

[morticia]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8655106/Im-starting-to-think-that-the-Left-might-actually-be-right.html

Gobsmacking opinion piece in the Torygraph, complete with full facial of Attila the Hen....wondering if the Left weren't correct all along??

Never thought I'd see the day..