Richest fortunes rise 23 percent this year to top $5 trillion
Bloomberg Billionaires Index uncovered 67 billionaires in 2017
A two-minute guide to President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed cabinet. Already the richest in modern history, his picks include an array of the super wealthy, big business executives and climate change deniers
New Yorker writer Jane Mayer examines the origins, rise and dominance of a billionaire class to whom money is no object when it comes to buying power
America’s billionaires minimize their tax burdens, making the rest of us pick up their tab.
Think of this as the year that democracy of, by, and for the billionaires shall not perish from the Earth. In other words, these days, if you have billions of dollars, you can shout from the skies and the rest of us have to listen. They are: Sheldon Adelson, Charles and David Koch, Sam Walton, Rupert Murdoch, Linda McMahon, or hedge fund honchos like John Paulson and Steven Cohen.
This is the heart of the new financialism and it is happening all over the country. If this were just one isolated case, we could probably live with it. It might even lead to a new law that would outlaw Ackman's outrageous behavior. But this kind of de-creative destruction is now a central feature of our new financialized economy. It is now routine for big-time investors to make bets against companies and then try to bring those companies down using a variety of tactics.
Spread the word