October 1987

The Global Financial Crisis “The restructuring of global financial markets and institutions has enabled the accumulation of vast amounts of private wealth, a large portion of which has been amassed as a result of strictly speculative transactions. The number of billionaires in the US alone increased from 13 in 1982 to 149 in 1996. The “Global Billionaires Club” (with some 450 members) has a total Worldwide wealth well in excess of the combined GDP of the group of low income countries with 56 percent of the World’s population (Forbes Magazine, International Billionaires, the World’s Richest People, 1997. The data is based on recorded wealth. It tends to grossly underestimate the concentration of global wealth). Family fortunes are in some case in excess of the GDP of countries (for instance, the private wealth of the Walton Family owners of Walmart (27 billion), is of the same order of magnitude as the...

“The restructuring of global financial markets and institutions has enabled the accumulation of vast amounts of private wealth, a large portion of which has been amassed as a result of strictly speculative transactions. The number of billionaires in the US alone increased from 13 in 1982 to 149 in 1996. The “Global Billionaires Club” (with some 450 members) has a total Worldwide wealth well in excess of the combined GDP of the group of low income countries with 56 percent of the World’s population (Forbes Magazine, International Billionaires, the World’s Richest People, 1997. The data is based on recorded wealth. It tends to grossly underestimate the concentration of global wealth). Family fortunes are in some case in excess of the GDP of countries (for instance, the private wealth of the Walton Family owners of Walmart (27 billion), is of the same order of magnitude as the GDP of Bangladesh with...