Of the 8 men, not one of them have less then 40 billion dollars, the richest of them, Bill Gates is worth approximately 75 billion dollars. The second richest man is probably one you've never heard of: Amancio Ortega, a Spanish billionaire, whose worth 72 billion according to the most recent Forbes estimate. There is a good reason why you've never heard of the man who is ostensibly Europe's richest man according to his wikipedia page no photograph had been published in the press of him until 1999. Warren Buffet, the wizard of Wall Street whose become a darling of liberals for his ostensible social democratic rhetoric is next at #3 and then comes Carlos Slim, telecom mogul and the beneficiary of neoliberal Mexico's privatization plans and greater Latin America's stark inequities.
As if to underscore America's continued power and supremacy in the new millennium 6 out of the 8 billionaires listed were Americans. That is not surprising given that in 2015 the US had 536 billionaires against Europe's 534 billionaires according to wikipedia. Europe with a population of 740 million people and an enormous economy rivals the United States with its population mere 300 million. Since European Russia is included in the population estimates of Europe but its billionaires are not included within "Europe" it can legitimately be argued that Europe taken as a whole has more billionaires then America. But the point is, with an economy as large or slightly larger then America's and a population double in size, America still rivals Europe as a centre of the super-rich. The billionaire capitals of Europe are, unsurprisingly, the five great European powers: UK, Germany, Russia, France, and Italy. The first four having some claim to being legitimate "super-powers" in their own right, naturally, contain more billionaires then the other powers. Social democratic Sweden with its small population and limited ability to project military power still nets 26 billionaires. More then the formal estimate of Japan's super-rich at 24 until recent decades Japan had more millionaires per capita then any country; now China has surpassed this estimate by not only surpassing Japan as the second largest concentration of millionaires anywhere and by some estimates has surpassed the United States in number of billionaires; in any case, it is several hundred, between 200 and 500. But as if to underscore the disparity, China's richest man is officially worth 33 billion dollars, not rich enough to make the top 8 but rapidly catching up.
Unknown Billionaires
Most of us have heard the phrase "the millionaire next door" the image of the miser, who seems to work a simple enough job, keeps his head down, and doesn't advertise or seem to embody the real number in his bank account. But is there a potential "billionaire next door"? According to Business Insider a team of Bloomberg reporters who are employed by the poorest of the eight, Michael Bloomberg, are assigned to the task of uncovering hidden billionaire's such as Lynsi Torres, the 30 year old heir to the In-N-Out fast-food fortune. The team of reporters have uncovered 90 billionaires in just one year and the reason why the super-rich might hide their fortunes is fairly self-evident. Not only do they not want to be targeted by advertising their wealth in public but many it should be assumed hide their wealth so it wont be taxed or aren't technically billionaires on paper. US president Donald Trump is one of the few of America's 500 billionaires with a pension for advertisement. Other stories emphasize that it wasn't even widely known that the Kochs were one of the richest families in America or even made the Forbes list until they started meddling in politics, specifically with their bankrolling of the Tea Party movement. The reason for that is the Kochs are both highly secretive and run a private company which is not publicly traded. That such a wealthy family could be "hidden in plain sight" without attracting much attention in the United States casts doubt on whether Forbes or anyone else has accounted for all the minor billionaires of the world. Lynsi Torres whose fortune amounts to $1.1 billion dollars is almost 75 times poorer then Gates. Other objections to the way Forbes and others tally up the billionaire and richest lists are to my mind valid: 1. they don't count heads of state so kleptocrats embezzling public funds or on the take don't make it 2. they don't count monarchial or certain aristocratic families 3. they don't count the "legacy" wealth of longstanding business clans such as the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Duponts, the Morgans etc, etc. 4. and this is my own observation, they don't count criminal wealth, for instance who would've known that El Chapo was a billionaire until he got a little too high in his notoriety. Misha Glenny estimates that global organized crime may make up 20% of global GNP--so far only in post-Soviet countries like Russia and certain Latin American nations like Mexico and Columbia does the mainstream media consider the mafia as an important part of the ruling class. In Russia, it is widely acknowledged that the mafia was an essential part of making the openly capitalist transnational oligarchical ruling class. But in the West and in the "civilized" regions of Asia, its not as if organized crime is absent and in fact the top kingpins are essential elements of the ruling class even if its not widely recognized. Black funds and black money associated with organizations like the CIA and the military also is not figured, are there secret pentagon and CIA billionaires? Who knows, but Douglas Valentine an expert on the CIA named his new book The CIA as Organized Crime for a reason, and there are those conspiracy theorists who believe that the "deep state" controls a great deal of the economy through secret methods.
To go back to the issue of wealthy families, the Walton family has a combined 145 billion dollars in wealth. Christy Walton is allegedly the world's richest woman at 36.7 billion beating out French tycoon Lilian Bellencourt by 2 billion. While this information is known to Forbes it seems that it does not treat these families as a coherent whole, even though taken together the Waltons are richer then Bill Gates and have more wealth then Apple, the largest company in the world, has in its war chest (100+ billion). The old money families such as the Rockefellers, Morgans, Rothschild, Krupps, Warburgs, Oppenheimers etc. do not often make the list. I suppose there are legitimate reasons for this in the first place these families are highly secretive and in the second-place their fortunes are scattered over a number of heirs that only grow more numerous over time. But it stands to reason that a family like the Rockefeller's, whose founder was likely wealthier in his time then Bill Gates is today, must have had their fortune grown by quite a degree even if they put all their money in safe, low-return bonds. The reason the heirs and heiresses of the old families so rarely make the top list can also be attributed to propagandistic purposes, it is important to Forbes and other business magazines that the list of business-world bigwigs appear to be mostly made up of self-made men. In spite of this "bias" against old money the number of heirs and heiresses on the Forbes list is increasing. The reason for all this is simply as even self-appointed guru of "social democratic" liberal American capitalism Warren Buffet recognizes, the heirs of great fortunes are but winners in a genetic lottery. Their legacy wealth is a form of unearned economic privilege that would lead classical economists to stigmatize them as "rentiers" or "the idle rich" it belies the idea that capitalism gives everyone an equal opportunity and that a level playing field exists. The bourgeoisie is very aware that such a class replicates the decadence of the aristocracy they overthrew to create the modern age and that it is a sign that capitalism is dying.
Despite all the nouveau-riche billionaires created in the neoliberal era the titans of industry are increasingly made up of mere inheritors so according to Guy Standing's book The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay it is estimated by 2030 that half of the billionaires on the Forbes list will be inheritors. The Oxfam report even admitted that not only will 2.2 trillion, more then the annual GDP of India, be inherited in coming years but in fact poverty reduction had been exaggerated in India and China. This piece is recommended reading for anyone who continues to believe that this growing inequality is harmless or is taking place alongside an unprecedented reduction in poverty. One is tempted to quote America's richest man in 1976 J. Paul Getty: "The meek will inherit the Earth but not its mineral rights." the land, water, and even sunlight and air should be tacked onto the end of that.
A (Secret) World of Trillionaires?
The business press openly acknowledges that if the present capitalist system and its monopolistic trends continue then it is inevitable that within a few decades a new class of trillionaires must emerge. The men on the Oxfam list have more money then the annual gross domestic product of many small countries, but should literal trillionaires arise we will see men with more money and power then developed nations. For instance, the estimated GDP of Russia which is still a major power is estimated at 1.2 trillion dollars. According to Business Insider Bill Gates will become the world's first trillionaire in 2042 if present trends continue--and despite giving away 28 billion dollars of his fortune to his "charity" as of 2013, he has ascended back to his ranking as world's richest man. Business Insider sums it up rather nicely when your that rich its actually hard to quit making money, to become poorer. And its not that Gates has a wealth addiction (though its likely he does) but merely that as has long been observed: money makes more money. Whether he actively manages his money or not, or capital as should be properly said, it continues to grow and the larger the sum is, the greater the return is thanks to exponential growth. But this invites another question that I admit has captured my imagination of late, could this mean that in the present point in history there are already secret trillionaires? Yes, and in my opinion, there has at least been one: the Emperor Hirohito of Japan stole at least 100 billion in 1945 dollars in WWII from its colonies in Asia, which would be equivalent to about 1.3 trillion dollars. How ironic then that the video gaming world's guru of conspiracies, Hideo Kojima, made the existence of an unprecedented secret fortune called "The Philosopher's Legacy" the lynchpin of the Metal Gear Solid series purported to be exactly the same sum: 100 billion dollars. Instead of an enormous secret fortune existing as the common pool of the allied super-powers (USA, Soviet Union, China) it is actually in Kojima's native Axis Japan where such a large fortune attained through conspiratorial means actually once existed! Japanese billionaire Ryoichi Sasakawa once proclaimed: "I am the world's richest fascist" but he was certainly a small-fry next to Japan's fascist trillionaire Royal family. In addition to the enormous amount of bullion and cultural artifacts looted from Japan's short-lived Asian Empire, the Japanese Royal family was unquestionably the largest landlord in Japan and quite likely the largest capitalist in Japan too.
Another big time Japanese capitalist family of the fascist-era was the Mitsui clan who at one time controlled 15-20% of Japan's GNP and was thought by many contemporaries to be richer then Henry Ford (another claimant to the world's richest title in his time). How much of this wealth did the Japanese royal family hold onto? If Sterling Seagrave's book is to be believed much of it ended up in the hands of the United States and the Marcos dictatorship, while most of it was converted into black funds to fight communism and support the global right but even so its still up for debate whether it all fell into Allied hands, and the United States was not a complete spoil-sport but in fact Nixon traded the M-Fund (worth 60 billion in his time) which was a hedge-fund set up to launder the spoils of that fortune. According to Seagrave not only was it worth trillions by the time of the writing of the book but in fact it over the late 20th century it acted as a spoils system for corrupt Japanese politicians paying out trillions for the functions of the Japanese political class. Some measure of that laundered money still belongs to the royal family but we should consider that when Japan was still economic super-power the Royal Palace was reputed to be worth more then all the land in Canada. Japan's real estate market was alleged to be worth 2/3 of the planet at one time, even if these figures are completely inaccurate, to my mind they illustrate that its probable the land-holdings of the royal family conservatively would probably make them billionaires or hundred billionaires. To my mind, its certainly not impossible that the royal family of Japan whether it is considered state property or not, whether it is liquid or not, have a trillion dollars in assets. Although the speculation on the existence of trillionaires online, from what I can tell, is surprisingly sparse, many conspiracy theorists focus on the royal families. There does exist a good reason for this outside of paranoia, royal families have always been incredibly wealthy, and in the bourgeois modern world, monarchies have been forced to become adept at capital accumulation to survive. Since the personage of the monarch blends the function of private and public power, it is often difficult to define where the public power of the state begins and the private power of the monarch ends. The House of Saud is reported by mainstream press to be worth 1.4 trillion dollars, perhaps it comes as little surprise then that this exceptionally wealth family also happens to lead one of the world's last absolute monarchies. The majority of Marxists view the post-1688 British monarchy as the world's first bourgeois monarchy, or rather a constitutional monarchy that Marxist historian Christopher Hill once called "a republic in everything but name" Insiders in the British crown have a peculiar and even somewhat disturbing name for it: "the Firm" and no matter which came first, to my mind it certainly evokes the cultish name of adoration that CIA-men have dubbed their agency: "the Company". If we look at it from a Marxist perspective this insider name for the British crown makes sense, in a bourgeois capitalist world it makes sense that since the crown is no longer an absolutist theocratic authority as it was in the past that it would adopt the role of capitalist corporation.
But according to the press the Queen is just a poor relation in comparison to Britain's own titans of industry and finance, to say nothing of those in the rest of the world. It is said the royal family lives off the welfare of the British taxpayer, by some estimates she isn't even a billionaire, how could it be possible that she's a trillionaire? You know what they say about appearances... even to this day Queen Elizabeth is considered by mainstream sources to be the world's largest landholder with 6 billion acres of land held in 36 different countries (many post-colonial nations such as Papua New Guinea are still considered part of the crown) the British monarchy is still a global landlord, with holdings in some of the hottest real estate markets on Earth such as London itself. And for anyone who believes the power of monarchy no longer exists in the 21st century it is interesting to note that the majority of the world's largest landowners are still monarchs, constitutional or otherwise. The Vatican comes in at number 3 in that department but surely it must be considered one of the world's largest financial centres or banking organizations as well. Indeed, while vulgar money-lending survived the middle ages and was often associated with Jews, it was the Christian Templars who paved the way for the modern financial system as they used loans extended for trade and to the state to wage war as a way of getting around the Christian prohibition of usury. This is why fiat money in the much of the West and most of the world retains the odd characteristic that its spent into existence as debt and that private investors buy this debt in the form of bonds which is paid at tax payers expense. Despite the wailings over state debt from the bourgeoisie and austerity it remains the case that the rich love state-debt and use it to their advantage where possible as evidenced by the trillions of dollars in bonds that are owned by the elite. Going back to the existence of potential royal trillionaires whose to say that the heads of these families who are at least formally in charge of powerful European states do not have trillions in shell companies, hidden accounts and assets? Whether anyone has one trillion dollars in liquid cash is another story but we know for a fact that the global elite have trillions upon trillions stowed away, that much has been admitted by bourgeois journalists themselves.
Some have claimed that the prominent business families such as the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Warburgs, and even the Krupps have trillions in assets. The Rothschild's are an obvious target as the 19th century Europe's richest family (it is said that at certain points Rhodes and Oppenheimer surpassed them) which is like almost all rich families highly-secretive but now one that has hundreds of heirs. The fact that their wealth is split over such a large family would by itself explain why no Rothschild ever makes it to the Forbes top 100 even if their not open about their wealth
Do I think its impossible that the Rothschilds have several trillion amongst themselves? I do not. Do I think its possible that the Rothschilds have hundreds of trillions or even "quadrillions" as some conspiracy theorists claim? I think that's far-fetched. Talking about the Rothschild's means dipping into something of a poisoned well since their constant figures in far-right conspiracies about Jewish domination. Less popular conspiracies about the Rothschilds since it isn't as compatible with growing far-Right influence in the conspiracy-sphere is their relationship to the Vatican as its bankers, as alleged Jesuits, and loyal subjects and promoters of the still very real British Empire. The Rockefeller's it seems practically disappear from the discussion even though John D. Rockefeller himself was worth an estimated 300 billion dollars in today's currency (2% of US GDP at the time) and was the first dollar billionaire. His fortune is likely spread over fewer heirs too and one must imagine what it comes to today if the Rockefeller family invested even a quarter of it wisely. Former intelligence officer and conspiracy theorist Robert Gaylon claimed that he had access to a source that informed him that the Rothschild's assets come to 100 trillion and the Rockefeller's come to 11 trillion in 1998. Researcher on the Bilderberg group Daniel Estulin claims that hundred-trillionaires and "quadrillionaires" exist and in a true bit of mindfuckery claims that even the Rockefellers and Rothschilds are "pawns" in the global order-- the true known individuals with such wealth being the royal families of Europe, the next being anonymous members of the Venetian Black Nobility. He claims to have in his possession one document showing one Krupp family bank amounting to 112 trillion dollars. To me this is probably far-fetched speculation and the claim that there are people with thousands of quadrillions of dollars when there isn't that much money in existence and not even derivatives market comes close with its virtual wealth is bizarre. Whether Estulin is presenting what he believes to be a genuine document in good faith I'd take it with a whole shaker of salt as by his own admission he was forced to avail himself of sources in intelligence agencies to write his book on the Bilderbergs--one thing they specialize in is disinfo.
Royal families, aristocratic bloodlines, old money capitalist clans who operate monopoly and oligopolistic enterprises, has there ever not been a time when some segment of the bourgeoisie on the make did not treat or view such people has enemies? No, there has not, and naturally since such people are enemies of the proletariat too it has made for excellent propaganda to distract from the system as a whole and from discussion about what elements might constitute its mass support. To attack oligarchs but leave the system alone is safe for the bourgeoisie as a whole and to attack monopolists and rentiers as Lenin notes means the system will only create new members of the same elements as capitalism naturally trends towards monopoly. It's not surprising these conspiracies of secret trillionaires are limited to Europe and America where the masses have been suspicious of such oligarchs in the life of their democracies and the capitalist system itself for sometime. In Europe, we talk of a mass of common people who have a history of class struggle going back thousands of years when the continent was still a peasants society. Are there any more allegations of secret trillionaires outside the Western frame of reference? Yes, consider the curious case of Johannes Riyadi who according to one British lord was alleged to have given 15 trillion dollars to the US government to prop up the dollar after the financial crisis and also claimed to have been ripped off by the US government. The 15 trillion was later transferred to the Scottish Royal Bank and then apparently given to HSBC. According to the FBI and some other Western authorities Johannes Riyadi does not exist but where exactly the 15 trillion came from is another contentious question. That reminds me of the case of another man who officially does not exist Santa Romana, the Filipino soldier in the US Army who was alleged to have tortured Yamashita's driver into giving up the location of Japanese war pillage. The Seagraves argue that he was a real man with a wife, children, a mistress, CIA partners and his name on several bank statements. As of 2006, and as far as I know, the Philippine government continues to deny his existence which would be unsurprising as he was a paymaster for the Marcos dictatorship and for various CIA operations around the world. He was alleged to be a secretive billionaire living modestly in Manilla and not much of a socialite but if he existed and he played the role Seagraves ascribed to him surely hundreds of billions passed through his hands even if little of it was "his". CIA agent and Japan scholar Chalmers Johnson finds the Seagraves account to be credible just in case any reader thinks I'm merely spouting drawing on the work here of wild conspiracy theorists.
Is Riyadi a real person? Could he really be worth 36 trillion? Why did the bank of Indonesia release a document saying he "only" has 700 tons gold instead of the claimed 700,000 if he was not a real person? To my knowledge its not possible to have that much gold but the Seagraves makes a persuasive argument that an accurate account of how much bullion is in Asia has never been done and its likely that the gold monopolies underreport the real quantity of gold in existence. The bullion stolen by the Japanese according to the Seagraves exceed the official statistics on the gold reserves in existence. There is even one Malaysian man who claims to be a trillionaire today and allegedly has documents showing that he has five trillion Euros. It is likely the man is crackpot but it begs the question if there aren't smarter quieter individuals capable of attaining that much. We know that for instance the Blackrock Hedge-fund manages an astounding 15 trillion dollars worth of assets estimated by some to be 7% of world assets. If the highest corporate world and the deep state are anything they are opaque and mysterious. You never know exactly what's going on.
So far, I see two cases where trillionaire status has been achieved and there is a material strong case for thinking so, that would be the case of the Hirohito family and the House of Saud. It's interesting that both cases are non-Western, which to beg the question again, makes you wonder if there are Western trillionaires. Two reasons that could be cited for their non-existence would be the West's moral scruples about inequity and a better regulator system in place with democratic checks and balances. The first point isn't even worth considering; the second point could have merit but likely has too much emphasis placed on it, and would reflect an overblown case of superior government which the West does not have or else it would be growing its economy and improving the standard of living for its people faster then authoritarian China does it. The argument that we have better regulatory system would be based not on the existence of more honest tax-men but rather a more efficient state bureaucracy which is interested in the wealth of the top capitalists in order to fund the state not necessarily to improve the public welfare. The West also seems has a long-standing distrust of the state and obsession with private property and the privacy of super-rich individuals. This is why I think there's a fair case, if not exactly an air-tight one, for thinking trillionaires already exist. Ever notice how it seems report after report after report on inequality always finds it getting worse and worse? That they've uncovered new findings on it even if the available public data hasn't changed much since the six months to a year since the last one? It's almost like now that Western societies are experiencing serious social strife and low-growth that economists care about inequality again but not enough to do any deeper digging then the figures then their handed by the state and the big corporations and super-rich themselves. Sometimes its an atrocious case of not checking their homework such as the Oxfam report that showed the wealth of the poor was decreasing as "shocking" as this find was for the elite it wasn't much of a surprise to anyone who read economist Michel Chossudovsky's 2003 critique of poverty measures and the basic failure to account for inflation by the agencies trumpeting the reduction of poverty for "hundreds of millions" and even "billions". It's worthwhile in my opinion for Marxists and others seeking the truth about this issue to undertake research on it.
You can find some surprising things, for instance its now known that Hitler was a billionaire
and the step-grandchildren of Goebbels are billionaires so who says that crime doesn't pay? Speculation on the existence of unknown trillionaires has the danger of making the real inequality of the known ruling class look less surreal then it actually is: after all 75 billion dollars is still a fuck-ton of money. Even if J. Paul Getty confided to a journalist in 1957 that "a billion dollars isn't what it used to be" having a billion dollars in the bank is still a tremendous amount that any individual or family would be hard-pressed to spend on personal consumption alone. Credit Suisse argued that in just two decades there will be 11 trillionaires so in the grand scheme of things this isn't a long way off and the threat is that increased automation and productivity of labor wont be used to ease the burdens of the working class but to create even more millionaires, billionaires, and trillionaires. The first two are an absolute certainty but the world can awaken to the fact that the future so many people hoped and bled for in which the liberatory possibilities we ascribe to technology could create an even darker future. Something can be done whether the solution people choose is reformist or revolutionary. But if people want to take target at the basic unfairness of a future world where some people have few hundred dollars in net-wealth or maybe even less and others have trillions then the possibility should be entertained that this might already be the case. It is already the case that in the year 2016 the historical watershed was already passed where the top 1% had more wealth then the bottom 99% of the planet. If the shoddy methods employed by the defenders of the order in their "critique" of it is any guide then it is likely worse then even that. Until we know everything they know we're left with the devilish and knowing of the hateful eight
When I first read about the alleged M-Fund, its similarity to Philosopher's Legacy from Metal Gear came to mind immediately. You're the first person I've heard from to make that connection and I will gladly follow your work from here on.
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