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Mexico's telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim has overtaken Bill Gates to become the world's richest person, according to a respected Mexican financial website.Mr Slim is now worth $67.8bn (£33.6bn), above Microsoft founder Mr Gates' $59.2bn, Sentido Comun says.
[news.bbc.co.uk...]
At $59.2bn, I think Bill still has a relatively comfortable lifestyle.
Then again, I think Bill could still be the richest, if that was his purpose.
You may have a large share in an expensive company, but if you (a) stopped being involved in the company and (b) put all your shareholding on the market... you would certainly not get nearly the asset value you had on paper.
Likewise, with a big portfolio, asset values can depend upon other asset values. Liquidating one set of assets could easily pull the value of another set of assets down considerably. When you have a lot of money, getting it into cash inevitably means disruption to the market.
Finally, with only around 800 billion US$ in circulation, pulling in up to a tenth of that will cause instant deflation based on the fact you now have cash from lots of people and you've not spent it again. That alone would mean the more assets you liquidised, the less you could get for the remaining assets - basically because people will not have the cash to buy them.
On a side but somewhat related not, according to estimates from Time magazine, there are approximately 960 billionaires in the world controlling 3.5 trillion dollars (US) or about 1,736,000,000,000 BP.
It's only money :)
Marshall
It's only money.
It's only paper.
Recently I read a LEE CHILD thriller (the Jack Reacher series) and learnt that the USD currency is actually NOT PAPER.
It is 75% cotton and 25% Linen.
so......
[treas.gov...]
It's only paper.
actually NOT PAPER.It is 75% cotton and 25% Linen.
Huh? I don't think you know what the definition of paper is.
Anyway, I remember seeing this thing about how much Michael Jordan made (this was when he was at his peak). It assumed that his earnings were spread out over the year 24/7 and were just for being Michael Jordan and had things like
- while MJ watches a movie he makes $7,000
- while he sleeps, MJ makes $31,000
and after about a hundred such things, it said "And if he made that much every hour for the next 78 years, he would make less than Bill Gates made last year".
On a serious note, these amounts of money are staggering, and incomrehensible to most of us mere mortals.
I find the stories of what happens after a "normal" person wins the lottery in the UK or US etc. Highly entertaining.....and terribly sad some of the time.
