Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos And Warren Buffett Have More Money Than The Poorest 50% Of The U.S. Population Combined

The problem is not that we have a few people that are rich – the problem is that we have so many that are poor.  As you will see below, three extremely wealthy individuals have as much money as the poorest half of the nation combined.  In a free market capitalist society, there are always going to be some that do better than others, and there is nothing wrong with that.  But in our society today, there are so few that are doing well.  At this point a majority of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and “one in five households have zero or negative net worth”…

In the United States, the 400 richest individuals now own more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of the population and the three richest own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent, while pervasive poverty means one in five households have zero or negative net worth.

Those are just several of the striking findings of Billionaire Bonanza 2017, a new report (pdf) published Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) that explores in detail the speed with which the U.S. is becoming “a hereditary aristocracy of wealth and power.”

That means that if you have no debt and a single dime in your pockets, you have more wealth than one-fifth of the entire country.

Okay, so let’s talk about the three men that have more wealth than the poorest 50 percent of the U.S. population combined.  Those three men are Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, and Warren Buffett.  I don’t want to take anything away from what those three have accomplished, because we need more risk takers and entrepreneurs.

Sadly, the level of small business creation has fallen in every presidential administration going all the way back to George H.W. Bush, and the percentage of Americans that are self-employed is hovering near all-time record lows.

As a nation, we desperately need to return to a culture that encourages free market capitalist thinking.  We want young men and women to create, invent, innovate and start new ventures.  But instead, today our culture encourages young people to become dependent on the government and on the big corporations, and as a result the middle class is evaporating.

As I discussed above, at this point 20 percent of all U.S. households have “either zero or negative wealth”…

The rise at the wealthiest end of society comes as one in five US households live in what the report’s authors call the “underwater nation”, with either zero or negative wealth. Inequality is even more stark among minorities. Three in 10 black households and 27% of Latino ones have zero or negative wealth, compared with 14% of white families.

In recent years, unprecedented intervention by global central banks has created an absolutely enormous stock market bubble, but the real economy has continued to struggle.

Just look at what is happening to Sears.  This week they announced that they lost between $525 million and $595 million during the 3rd quarter of 2017.

How in the world do you do that?

If they had their employees doing nothing all day but flushing one dollar bills down the toilet, I still don’t think that they could lose that much money in three months.

Sears is going to sell 140 stores in a desperate attempt to stay afloat, but many believe that this is simply delaying the inevitable.  In fact, one prominent analyst named Bill Dreher believes that Sears will never be profitable again…

One Wall Street analyst is beginning to doubt whether Sears Holdings will ever be profitable again, as the 124-year-old retailer struggles for liquidity and same-store sales evaporate.

“Sears’ operational performance is clearly NOT improving, and we grow increasingly concerned whether the company will ever return to profitability,” wrote Susquehanna analyst Bill Dreher in a note to clients Wednesday. “Further highlighting the company’s weakened position is the reality that manufacturers are increasingly demanding tighter payment and/or withholding products.”

Once upon a time, Sears was the number one shopping destination for the middle class.

But like the middle class in America, the best days for Sears are now long gone.

If we want to restore our economy to greatness, we need a vibrant middle class.

And in order to have a vibrant middle class, we need to have a system that encourages entrepreneurs and small businesses.  Free markets work if you allow them to, but unfortunately today we are strangling our entrepreneurs and small businesses with rules, regulations, red tape and oppressive levels of taxation, and until we change our ways we are going to continue to get the same very poor results.

The post Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos And Warren Buffett Have More Money Than The Poorest 50% Of The U.S. Population Combined appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

Steve Bannon reportedly expected to raise taxes on the wealthy

The x-factor here, of course, is Trump

The tensions between the Trump administration’s populist win and its more traditionally Republican establishment types have been well-documented in recent months. And now, more than two months after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council chief Gary Cohn unveiled an outline of the administration’s tax-reform ambitions, another battle between the two wings appears to be brewing.

Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon is said to be pushing to raise the top tax rate on individuals, with Axios saying the former Breitbart CEO would like the top rate to have “a 4 in front of it” – currently, the highest income-tax bracket in the US is 39.6% for individuals earning more than $414,000 a year.

Some officials – code for Mnuchin, Cohn and the other members of the more traditionally corporatist (or rather Goldmanist) wing of the Trump administration – believe Bannon’s ideas are crazy. But Bannon believes raising taxes on the wealthy could help the administration boost its populist bona fides, an angle which Trump appears to be actively pursuing once again having recently failed with his more traditional fiscal reform push. But as tax reform is shaping up to be a must-win for the Trump administration, it would hardly be a surprise to see Bannon’s plan shelved in favor of across-the-board cuts that would help rally the Republican Party’s conservatives to support whatever reform package Trump ultimately presents.

Cohn and Mnuchin reportedly view tax reform as a top priority for the administration. However, as Axios notes, time to pass comprehensive reform is quickly running out.

• Lobbyists who have met with Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin say they’ve been struck by how impatient the two appear:


• Cohn has told associates that if tax reform doesn’t get done this year, it’s probably never going to happen.


• Sources who know Cohn speculate that he’ll leave the White House the instant he concludes tax reform is dead.


• While Cohn and Mnuchin differ stylistically — Cohn is brash and physically imposing while Mnuchin is mild-mannered — sources who’ve been meeting with them say they share the same philosophy: Go big or go home.

Ironically, Cohn and Mnuchin are warming to an idea that Bannon supported in the aftermath of the election, when he claimed that he’s “not a conservative” and said he would support spending packages that blow out the deficit, arguing that the US should rebuild its infrastructure now while interest rates are low. Mnuchin, for his part, has refused to promise that tax reform wouldn’t lead to wider deficits when he and Cohn unveiled the outline for the administration’s reform plan back in April.

Cohn and Mnuchin aren’t bluffing when they say they want to slash the corporate tax rate to 15% from the current 35%. Neither man has any interest in timid tax cuts, and they wager that special interests will relinquish their loopholes if they become convinced their tax rate really will be in the teens.

• They’re becoming far less wedded to revenue neutrality — the idea, favored by House and Senate Republican leadership, that tax cuts mustn’t add to the deficit.


• They’re increasingly tantalized by an idea some conservatives (like Grover Norquist and Sen. Pat Toomey) are pushing: Allow major tax cuts to last longer than 10 years without having to balance the budget.


• Conservatives like Toomey favor a more expansive 20- or 25-year period. But top White House officials are more cautious, and are said to be weighing a 15-year period.

The last time the US passed comprehensive tax reform, the legislative battle took two years. Thus, a new theme is emerging that applies not just to tax reform, but to Trump’s agenda more broadly: Do it now, or let it go.

Context: The last time Congress passed major tax reform, in 1986, it was a two-year rollercoaster. This time, the White House officials driving the process have concluded there’s no chance of getting Democrats to support what Trump wants to do. So, they believe it must be done before the 2018 midterm elections or not at all.

That’s going to be a heck of a challenge. They need to first pass a budget, which is embroiled in fights over defense spending and welfare reform. And they need to finish with health care. Some top Republicans have come to believe, contrary to conventional wisdom, that tax reform stands a better chance if health care fails — so desperate will Trump and Republican leaders be for a victory.

The x-factor here, of course, is Trump. How does he feel about raising taxes on the wealthy? And, more importantly, is Bannon succeeding in moving the Trump administration in a more populist direction, following Trump’s decision to largely abandon his protectionist rhetoric? A few more tweets from the president should provide the answer.

Via Zero Hedge

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Featured Image: Michael Vadon/Flickr

How Anxiety, Low Self-Worth may Spark Countless Individuals to Overeat

Two studies confirm that stress is a major underlying factor in the obesity epidemic among the poor. One from Scotland, published in the journal Appetite, documents the link between overeating and the stress that accompanies income inequality. The other, published in Psychological Science, attempts to explain the link between being raised in poverty and a proclivity to eat in the absence of hunger.

Poverty looks much different in developed countries than in undeveloped and developing countries. On the other side of the world, poverty-stricken children have sunken eyes, and bloated bellies protrude over scrawny sickly legs.

In countries like Africa, bloated bellies come from parasitic worms living in children’s intestines. These parasites use what little food a child is able to scrape together. In places like the United States and the United Kingdom, swollen bellies are often a sign of poverty, but they are caused by obesity rather than parasites.

Obesity has become a massive epidemic among low-income families. Policymakers have consistently tried to tackle the problem by focusing on issues like the cost and availability of healthy foods – and that’s a good thing. However, researchers have increasingly been focusing attention on the emotional needs of people living in poverty, which is an unrelentingly stressful way of life.

The First Study – Environmental Influence on Eating

For the first study researchers recruited 31 women of normal weight to participate in what was they were told was a consumer research study. Each woman received a bowl of chocolate chip cookies and a bowl of pretzels and was told to sample and rate each snack. Then the women were told they were free to eat the leftovers while they waited for the next part of the study to begin.

The participants were then asked to complete a survey about their childhood before the age of 12 and rate their agreement with the following statements:

• My family had enough money for things growing up.”

• “I grew up in a relatively wealthy neighborhood.”

• “I felt relatively wealthy compared to others my age.”

The researchers tallied up their answers and calculated how much each participant had eaten based on the food that remained in the bowls. Among the women who reported feeling hungry, the researchers found no difference in calories consumed between those who grew up in poorer environments and those who were fairly wealthy growing up.

But childhood environment did have an impact on how much the women ate when they weren’t actually hungry. Women who came from more impoverished backgrounds ate more of the cookies and pretzels and consumed more calories overall than those who said they came from wealthier homes.

The Second Study – Impact of Low-Socioeconomic Status

For the second study, Texas Christian University psychologist Sarah Hill and colleagues conducted 3 experiments in which they either measured or manipulated the energy needs of a group of students and then gave them snacks to eat. One group of 60 female undergraduates answered a questionnaire about their family’s socioeconomic status during both childhood and currently.

Half of the students drank a 12 oz. can of Sprite to satisfy their immediate energy need while the other half consumed an equal amount of mineral water. Ten minutes later all of the participants were asked to eat and evaluate cookies.

Students who grew up in wealthier households ate fewer cookies if they had just consumed Sprite, while students who were raised in poorer families ate just as many cookies whether they had consumed the soft drink or the water.

“Among individuals who grew up in high-socioeconomic status environments, food intake varied according to immediate physiological energy need,” the researchers wrote.

“These individuals consumed more calories when their current energy need was high than when it was low.

For individuals who grew up in low-socioeconomic status environments, however, the relationship between physiological need and food intake was decoupled. Their food intake appeared to be guided primarily by opportunity.”

The researchers concluded:

“Feeling poor relative [to] others had a clear effect on calorie consumption” and the overeating was due to “increased anxiety – particularly anxiety due to anticipated negative social evaluation.”

Sadly, it appears the stress came not from worrying about where their next meal or snack would come from, but rather from feeling left-out and believing wealthier people looked down on them.

Unfortunately, just because affordable healthy food is available in poor areas, that doesn’t necessarily mean people of low socioeconomic status will eat it. This is not because of some personality flaw, but because they may lack nutritional information and literally don’t know what foods are healthy or why. Many of these individuals grew up eating whatever cheap food was available, much of it full of sugar, calories, and fat, and may not be accustomed to eating fruits and vegetables.

Sources:

Daily Mail

Pacific Standard

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

Wealth Destruction For The 99.9 Percent

Blaming the 1% for diminished prosperity avoids the real reasons for designed poverty. In round terms, the seven billion souls that populate this planet translate into seventy million to be part of the 1%. Well, that amount is still a very large number to blame for the systemic transfer of riches into the hands of the few. A far more relevant approach is to examine the .001% or around seven million that fall into the mover or shakers of asset and possessions. Before targeting this group of mega wealth, that figure includes a very significant number, who are non players when it comes to global politics or transnational finance.

Recent record art sales illustrate the insulated existence that wraps the super rich in a different world from ordinary people. The Washington Post writes, What it looks like when the .001 percent fights over art.

“Welcome to Christie’s,” Pylkkanen said, without missing a beat.

It was that kind of night, with Christie’s selling a record $852.9 million worth of contemporary and post-war art. There were new records for 11 artists, including Twombly, Ed Ruscha, Peter Doig, Martin Kippenberger and Seth Price, according to figures released by Christie’s.”

Not exactly familiar household art celebrities, this version of trickledown economics is only for the in crowd. A Reuter report, Life continues sweetly for the .001 percent, continues.

“Art envy isn’t the only sign that the Occupy Wall Street din isn’t being heard on penthouse terraces. Sanford Weill, the former chief executive of Citigroup (C.N), put his 6,700-square-foot, top-floor residence on Central Park West on the market for $88 million. That’s twice what he paid for it four years ago and would be a Manhattan record. Weill said he plans to donate proceeds from the sale to charity, but for the time being would still have it as a deduction to apply against his taxable income.

The point is, the besieged banker class is still going about its business — and wielding considerable clout. That’s a lesson celebrity chef Mario Batali learned after likening bankers to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin at a media event. After news of the comments swept across Wall Street and sparked talk of boycotts among Batali’s well-heeled clientele, he apologized. With the 99 percent rallying against them, the rich clearly can’t afford to turn on themselves.”

While the uber rich are not exactly a monolith, there are certain factors that go unchallenged. List of 80 People With as Much Money as 1/2 of Humanity provides a starting point. Then examine the growth in their wealth. In 2015, there was a record of 1,826 people on the list with a total net worth of $7.05 trillion, up from $6.4 trillion in 2014. The bible of financial registry is the Forbes billionaire list which is wholly inadequate as a comprehensive tally.  Notwithstanding, the seven trillion figure is but a fraction of the estimated $241 trillion which represents total global combined wealth of all the people in the world.

This disparity just does not compute when compared to the commonly held dogma of the holdings of the 1%. Even the rarified air of the .001% will not account for the difference. The missing link is that people, as individuals, do not control the vast majority of resources, assets, money and wealth.

Governments, financial institutions, corporations, transnational conglomerates, NGO’s, trusts, estates and hidden hybrid ownership truly controls the global economy that dictates, who benefits from the consolidation of capital and oversight of natural resources.

The mandates that pass as national laws and international treaty relations share a common composition. Protecting the superstructure that facilitates elite domination over the masses of world population is the object of the game. The rest of us are left with distractions, illusions and misdirect narratives of a false reality that embodies the popular culture.

The mass media message is consistent. It paints the ruling class as benevolent and caring. The collectivist administrations of different regimes are planned as a huge dependence machine. Some countries are more dominant than others, by all practice institutional autocracy as a condition of allowing their citizens the privilege of conditional government sustenance.

Individual liberty is besieged as a frightening threat to the system. Actual free economic markets are destroyed as a matter of course. Cartels, cabals and monopolies rule as cronyism with the decision makers dictate the direction of the technocratic socialism that has engulfed world society.

The reason why human circumstances continue to deteriorate is clear to anyone who has the honesty to admit that the dire consequences are not accidental or unintentional. However, coming to grips with the architectures of international finance is just too painful to endure. A comment from a leaving subscriber of theBATR RealPolitik Newsletter, sums up perfectly a core reason why the world totalitarian system continues with such little opposition. “Your site does an excellent job of exposing the truth but this imposes too high a price on my daily mental attitude and overall health”.

Life is seldom fair, and more often painful, but a cop out of unpleasant reality guarantees that the Rothschild manipulated model of world slavery will achieve their ultimate goal of massive population extinction for the dependency populace.

A primary failure of the “Looney Left” is placing their faith into the role of government to correct the punitive excesses of global internationalism. The nature of the contrived interdependency is based upon the power of fiat finance to own and dictated policy to their state sponsored lackeys.

Those brave hearted dissenters to the “international community” are driven from office, discredited by a media assault or killed if they become too much of a threat.

Jack Lessenberry offers this assessment in, Politics and Prejudices: What’s really ruining America.

“Income inequality in this nation is not only bad and getting worse, but most of us are either brainwashed, in total denial, or too gutless to even talk about it. Why don’t you hear Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren screaming about this, as they should be?

For two simple reasons: First, they’re afraid they’ll instantly be accused of wanting to start “class warfare,” a term that, like socialism, evokes bad nightmares of — shudder — Communist dictatorships.

But more sadly, they probably don’t think there’s anything they can do about it, other than maybe slow the trend a little bit.”

This critique of the “so called” daring progressives actually reveals that both play up to the establishment. Bucking the true world power brokers is very dangerous. Ask JFK, RFK, George Wallace and Ronald Reagan. Satanic megalomaniacs are committed to the impoverishment of the masses and their eventual total demise.

When was the last time that a real populist grassroots movement was able to overthrow the ruling elites? The deplorable answer is never in our lifetime.

The systemic wealth destruction that has rendered former Middle America to borderline poverty came as no accident. Don’t blame all those new faces in the billionaire crowd; they only have large bank accounts. Focus on the dynasty families that share the same bloodline and pull the strings on government puppets that administer the all-inclusive enslavement of humanity as their primary goal.

Collectivism is a deadened scheme, originated by the globalists to deceive the struggling “unwashed” to look toward government for a better future. Wow, what a miserable fiasco.

Having money is better than being poor, all other factors are relative. However, earning wealth the old fashion way, by working hard is virtually a non starter today. The casino economy is a stacked deck against the industrious.

Only a total reputation of the Free Trade corporatist plantation that has de-industrialized America could remotely turn the tide. But before any boom could begin and restore national hope, the political organized crime syndicates must be recognized as the enemy of the people and driven from their power centers and debt created money schemes.

Just like the burnt out aforementioned BATR reader, the remaining moral participants that do battle with a corrupt system must risk having their head cut off, for any chance of returning to prosperity.

This is a clear example of collectivism at play. Government subsidies that replace real employment, does not create wealth for our own people or for the country as a whole. It is high time to admit that the 99.9% is screwed as long as this same old globalist trade fraud continues to impoverish our domestic economy.

Rally against the globalists and refuse any legitimacy to a system that is designed to distract with class warfare, while the central banksters own the vast total wealth and control the power structure.

Rich Discover New Ways To Escape Societal Collapse

Image source: YouTube

Escape plans and bugout bags are the latest fad for wealthy New Yorkers. Some Wall Street types even are paying $7,500 a month for an evacuation service to get them out of town fast during an emergency.

“It’s a marine evacuation service based in New York City,” co-owner Chris Dowhie said of Plan B Marine. “A boat is the fastest possible way out of Manhattan. A lot of people don’t wait in line to get on a ferry. They don’t want to worry about walking off of Manhattan as people had to do in the past. They know that a boat is the fastest way off.”

Evacuation for the Rich

Dowhie’s company, The New York Post reported, has a number of Coast Guard surplus Defender boats stashed around Manhattan Island. Wealthy customers pay between $4,500 and $7,500 per month for access to the boats, which would take them away from the city during, say, a terrorist attack.

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The rich, though, would have to pilot the boats themselves.

“It’s a sealed hull, unsinkable, and it provides rollover protection,” Dowhie said of the boats. “As long as your doors are shut, if the boat rolls over, the boat will right itself. So it’s about the safest boat you can find right now.”

“We plan out your evacuation route,” Dowhie told the newspaper, “and we plan for every customer differently depending on your needs.”

Getting out of Manhattan in an emergency can be nearly impossible. If the subways stop running, the only way to get off is by boat or walking over one of the bridges. Cars clog the bridges.

Dowhie and his time will train the customers to sail the craft themselves.

Survival Bunkers on Park Avenue?

But escape boats are not the only precaution that hedge fund managers, investment bankers and executives are taking. At least 25 New Yorkers spent between $25,000 and $30,000 to install bunkers with air-filtration systems in their homes to protect them from dirty bombs, Tom Gaffney told The Post.

Gaffney is CEO of Gaffco Ballistics, a company that installs bunkers and air-filtration systems for wealthy New Yorkers. Business has boomed since a bombing last year in Manhattan.

Another company, called Preppi, is selling $5,000 72-hour monogrammed bugout bags to the rich. Customers include Steven Spielberg and Modern Family star Julie Bowen. The bag contains night-vision scopes and a GPS satellite communicator.

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Time To Pay Attention — Super-Rich are Now Preppers Storing Food and Guns

It’s one thing for the tin foil wearing on head types of folks to prepare for doomsday, but it’s altogether another when the world’s wealthiest begin to prepare for the breakdown of civilization. But that’s exactly what some of the richest individuals are doing.

The New Yorker reported this week Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman is one such prepper. “He is less focussed on a specific threat—a quake on the San Andreas, a pandemic, a dirty bomb—than he is on the aftermath, ‘the temporary collapse of our government and structures,’ as he puts it. ‘I own a couple of motorcycles. I have a bunch of guns and ammo. Food. I figure that, with that, I can hole up in my house for some amount of time,’” he said. “I think, to some degree, we all collectively take it on faith that our country works, that our currency is valuable, the peaceful transfer of power—that all of these things that we hold dear work because we believe they work. While I do believe they’re quite resilient, and we’ve been through a lot, certainly we’re going to go through a lot more,” he said.

Huffman’s not alone in the country club of wealthy survivalist preppers. Former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martínez purchased a homestead piece of property on an island in the Pacific Northwest and furnished it with generators, solar panels, and cases of ammunition.

Martínez  told the NY’s Evan Osnos, “When society loses a healthy founding myth, it descends into chaos.” He added, “All these dudes think that one guy alone could somehow withstand the roving mob…No, you’re going to need to form a local militia. You just need so many things to actually ride out the apocalypse.”

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After he revealed to several of his friends about his island retreat and preparations, he explained that many of his friends opened up about their own preparations. “I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now,” he said.

It may seem unusual for a social media mogul and a former Facebook executive to become unlikely preppers, but when venture capitalists start to prep, it may take on a whole new meaning for some.

Financial analysts, advisors, and experts have concluded the American economy is on a fast-track towards economic collapse. As The Free Thought Project reported last week, former Congressman from Texas Ron Paul predicted the collapse of the economy within the first four years of Donald Trump’s presidency. Paul’s blaming the federal reserve saying their printing of trillions of worthless dollars has devalued the currency and placed the U.S. in the position of teetering on financial collapse.

One such financial expert is Tim Chang, a 44-year-old managing director at The Mayfield Fund. He told Osnos, “There’s a bunch of us in the Valley. We meet up and have these financial-hacking dinners and talk about backup plans people are doing. It runs the gamut from a lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, to figuring out how to get second passports if they need it, to having vacation homes in other countries that could be escape havens.”

Before admitting that he, his wife, and their daughter keep what’s known as a “bugout bag” packed at all times, he said, “I’ll be candid: I’m stockpiling now on real estate to generate passive income but also to have havens to go to…I kind of have this terror scenario: ‘Oh, my God, if there is a civil war or a giant earthquake that cleaves off part of California, we want to be ready.’”

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Fear appears to be the driving motivator for preppers to begin their chipmunk-style of hoarding supplies. Coupled with those fears, appears to be a lack of faith in the economic structures of society, and an overall distrust of the government to protect its citizenry in such cases of societal uncertainties. Those fears and concerns have given birth to a very real and growing movement of individuals and communities of preppers, all intent on doing the same thing: surviving.

While, it seems, the rich have now joined their ranks, one common denominator can be found across all levels of doomsday preppers: a lack of faith in the state. Many believe, despite the fact that Americans are loyal patriots, the citizens of the United States will turn on each other the minute food becomes scarce, chaos ensues, a natural or manmade disaster occurs, or a nuclear or EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack happens.

For those considering becoming preppers, Peak Prosperity, a website devoted to preparing for the end times, offers a few suggestions. Chris Martenson writes that people should be, “taking steps to be partially self-sufficient in the basics of life – food, warmth, shelter and water – and have useful experience or skills (medicine, fixing things, building, distilling, to name just a few) just makes sense.

You don’t have to strive to be completely self-reliant — it’s not realistic or necessary. Just position yourself to reduce your lifestyle requirements during times of strife, and to contribute valued support to those whom in turn you ask for help.”

Here’s How Much Money the World’s 10 Richest People Made in 2016

December 30, 2016   |   admintam

(ZHE) While Warren Buffett did best of all the richest people in 2016, he was far from alone.

The biggest fortunes on the planet whipsawed through $4.8 trillion of daily net worth gyrations in 2016.

The volatility — triggered by disappointing economic data from China at the start of the year, the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union in the middle and the election of billionaire Donald Trump at the end — didn’t prevent the richest from getting richer.

Their fortunes rose 5.7 percent for the year at the close of trading on Dec. 27, or some $237 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

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This article (Here’s How Much Money the World’s 10 Richest People Made in 2016) by Tyler Durden originally appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was used with permission. Tune in! Anti-Media Radio airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org.