Saturday marks four years since the day when financial and economic crisis facing the planet began, now in the phase of sovereign debt crisis.
Four years after the going under bankruptcy protection, Lehman Brothers bank emerged from bankruptcy after sending a shock wave across the financial world that created massive stock market crashes, small but numerous bank failures in America, excessive indebtedness of countries that didn’t leave big banks to fall and economic recession in almost every part of the world.
Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the morning of 15 September 2008, many things happened, the crisis was felt absolutely everywhere, the shock wave was beyond any barrier: during those four years governments have fallen, there were bankruptcies, some larger, some smaller, there were uprising movements motivated by dissatisfaction with unemployment and poverty.
Above all, many of them well known, we want to dwell into one aspect: there are people for whom the crisis was a time that they will remember with pleasure. That’s because while other people were without jobs or took to the streets, they made money. A lot.
Yes, you guessed it, it’s about the big billionaires of the world who knew how to make money when the country is struggling with bankruptcy, when unemployment grew, and companies closed down.
We will go over just a few examples:
George Soros, the famous and controversial American investor, had in 2008 a fortune estimated by Forbes at $9 billion. Currently, after he predicted the dissolution of eurozone and strongly criticized Germany, Soros has a net worth of $21.9 billion dollars, according to Bloomberg.
Ingvar Kamprad had just over $31 billion in 2008, according to Forbes. In four years he earned over $10 billion, bringing with IKEA at a fortune of $40 billion.
Amancio Ortega Gaon, the richest Spaniard and the only European on the podium of billionaires, had $20 billion in the year of Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. How much he has now? More than double! $46 billion, to be exact. That happened while his country’s economic situation creates ripples of concern across Europe.
We continue the short list with Lawrence “Larry” Joseph Ellison from Oracle who is also a richer man: he had $25 billion in 2008. Now Bloomberg estimated his fortune at $41 billion.
We stop here and go back to the crisis figures: 4 years after the fall of Lehman, 15% of Americans, or 46.2 million live in poverty. This percentage is the highest seen in the 53 years of the National Bureau of Statistics keeping track of this data.
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