April 07, 2011

The glossary of greed: at 'the top of the monetary food chain'

"With the 2011 Forbes List of the world’s billionaires recently released – and acutely aware of the huge volume of unaccounted for money found in offshore havens – Joan Baxter discusses the ‘highly stratified world that has become treacherously top-heavy’."

"This year’s Forbes List of the world’s wealthiest people is out. On the heels of the global financial crisis, with sky-rocketing food prices, climate change already making life even more difficult for poor farmers in developing countries, with conflict and political turmoil around the world and with a billion or so people going to bed (if they have one) hungry every night, the super-rich are doing very well for themselves indeed. The Forbes List of billionaires has swollen this year to a record 1,210 individuals.[1] On a planet with nearly 7 billion people, just 1,210 people (including 14 in Africa) possess $45 trillion, equivalent to 77% of the world’s GDP.[2]

But the Forbes List doesn’t tell the whole story. It includes only billionaires with publicly traded fortunes. While it does include several billionaires who made their vast fortunes by pillaging natural resources and wealth in Africa and elsewhere around the world, it misses their accomplices – the billionaire leaders of a whole slew of African, Middle Eastern and central Asian countries. The list doesn’t include men like Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who controls a stash worth ‘tens of billions’ that he managed to launder over the years using Swiss banks.[3] Nor does it include Egypt’s former ruler, Hosni Mubarak, whose fortune is being estimated – now that he is deposed and no longer being coddled (and financed) by his Western friends – in the tens of billions.[4]

If one could find all of these offshore holdings and add them to the $4.5 trillion net worth of the Forbes List billionaires, the amount would be more than staggering; it would be simply inconceivable. But we cannot track down their fortunes because they are well hidden."...

Read full article here, on the excellent Pambazuka News website, "Pan-African Voices for Freedom and Justice."

Journalist and award-winning author, Joan Baxter's most recent book ‘Dust from our Eyes: an Unblinkered Look at Africa’ is published by Pambazuka Press.