Sad News: America's Billionaires Facing Tough Times

By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality. Posted March 20, 2009.

Most of the world's billionaires, to be sure, did lose money last year. Some 87 percent, says Forbes, "saw their personal balance sheets falter."

But those faltering balance sheets still packed considerable financial punch. In billionairedom, even losers smile. The colorful Donald Trump, for one. He has lost almost half his fortune since last year's Forbes billionaire tally. No matter.

"We're going up," says Trump. "We're buying things we couldn't have dreamed of buying two years ago. And we have a lot of cash."

Indeed, a fortune worth even a single billion amounts to a nearly unfathomable nest egg. An average person who makes $50,000 a year would have to work 20,000 years to accumulate a fortune worth a simple $1 billion. The world's 793 billionaires now hold fortunes that average $3 billion.

More of these billionaires live in the United States than anywhere else. Thanks to the still expanding economic crisis, notes Forbes, the United States "is regaining its dominance as a repository of wealth."

American billionaires currently hold 44 percent of today's global billionaire collective fortune. Of the world's 14 richest billionaires, seven hail from the United States. Amazingly, four come from a single American family. The four top heirs to the fortune of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, now sport a combined $70.6 billion in net worth.

Numbers these large tend to numb. We need some perspective here. Try this: Over 19 million Americans work for state and local governments, mostly in education. The pension funds they depend on for their retirement security, the Federal Reserve reported last week, have lost $108.3 billion, 35 percent of their value, since the meltdown began.

Who bears the responsibility for this meltdown? Forbes editor-in-chief Steve Forbes seems to feel no one really bears any personal responsibility for our current economic carnage. He sees the meltdown as more or less a natural catastrophe.

"The global economy has been battered by a financial hurricane," says Forbes. "It's no surprise that billionaires are being battered along with everybody else."

But billionaires have not been battered like "everybody else." They and their fellow super rich, in their chase after more billions, have been the batterers. Their reckless behaviors, on Wall Street and in Corporate America's executive suites, have essentially hollowed out America's middle class.

These super rich, despite their losses over the last year, remain super rich. They can still afford any luxury. More dangerously, for the rest of us, these super rich can still afford to powerfully influence -- and distort -- the political decisions that determine who will pay and who will really suffer in the troubled days ahead.

See more stories tagged with: economy, billionaires, rich, financial crisis

Sam Pizzigati is the editor of the online weekly Too Much, and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

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