Earl Evleth

This will be a surprise to some. Usually it is assumed,
by Americans, that it has most of the world`s "millionaires".
In fact, looking at California Real Estate prices might
convince some people that it true just for California.
The estimate below is based on removing home real estate
from net worth.

Earl

****


"Old" Europe Has More Millionaires than U.S., Study Finds

John Roach
for National Geographic News
July 11, 2003

Watch Geography of Wealth on the National Geographic Channel in the U.S.,
Sunday, July 13, 8 p.m. ET/PT. See side bar for more details.

In real life, unlike reality TV, Europe really is the place to meet an
honest Joe (or Jo) millionaire, according to a recent report of the world's
richest people. The continent is home to approximately 2.6 million of the
deep-pocketed individuals.

"In Europe there is a lot of old and inherited money. There has been capital
formation for a number of years, centuries really," said Jim Wiggins, a
spokesman for Merrill Lynch's Global Private Client Group in New York.

The money managers, in collaboration with the consulting firm Cap, Gemini,
Ernst & Young, produce the annual World Wealth Report to determine how best
to serve the niche market of so-called high net worth individuals.

In total, there are an estimated 7.3 million people in the world whose
assets Ã?excluding their home Ã?amount to U.S. $1 million or more. Behind
Europe , North America has the second highest concentration of millionaires
at 2.2 million. The Asia Pacific region accounts for 1.8 million. Latin
America and the Middle East account for 300,000 each, and Africa accounts
for 100,000.

"Generally where you see the largest concentration of high net worth
individuals are countries with the most developed economies," said Wiggins.
"Western Europe has had a developed economy for longer than any other
region."


The world's 7.3 million millionaires collectively own U.S. $27.2 trillion in
financial assets, which is a 3.6 percent rise from the 2002 report. Nearly
200,000 people joined the ranks of the world's millionaires in 2003, a 2.1
percent rise. According to the report's authors, 2003 had the lowest growth
rate in the report's seven-year history.

Overall, the Asia Pacific region experienced the strongest regional growth
in millionaires , while North America reported a decline of 2.1 percent due
to the crumbling stock market and Latin America experienced a 3.6 percent
decline due to the oil crisis in Venezuela and the crash of the Argentinean
peso.

World's Poor

While the rich struggle to get richer, the World Bank estimates in its 2003
World Bank Atlas that nearly 23 percent of the world's 6.1 billion people
struggle to get by on less than U.S. $1 a day.

For the world's poor, and many other people, "wealth" is not necessarily
measured in financial assets, but could include the relative luxury of
access to fresh water and clean air, the ability to read a book, and a
balanced meal at the end of the day.

"We in most of the developed world are used to having access to water. In
other parts of the world that may be a large portion of their income to have
access to that water," said Richard Fix, a spokesman at the World Bank's
'Development Data Group in Washington, D.C.

According to the bank's report, the poorest countries are in sub-Saharan
Africa where, for example, in Democratic Republic of Congo the average
person earns just U.S. $80 per year. South Asia is the second poorest
region, with nearly 37 percent of the population making less than U.S. $1 a
day.

In comparison, the World Bank ranks Luxembourg as the country with the
highest per capita income. The United States, Western European countries,
Japan, and Canada follow closely behind.

The World Bank's modern-day focus is to help the poorest people and the
poorest countries get on the "paths of stable, sustainable, and equitable
growth."

To determine where to help, the bank categorizes countries as low, middle,
or high income based on a calculation of the per capita income. Countries
that fall into the low and middle categories are eligible for aid.

"In essence what the bank is looking at is those countries that are in need,
that are developing, and what is needed to help them develop furtherÃ?not
strictly on an economic basis, but also environmental or other issues," said
Fix.

Geography of Wealth

Andrew Mellinger, a research associate at the Center for International
Development at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that aid
organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations need to factor
in a country's physical geography when making development decisions.

"When you consider the ways in which geography affects development, you
begin to see how pervasive and significant it is," he said.

For example, countries that have access to trade via a coastline or
navigable waterway to the ocean are at a distinct economic advantage to
landlocked countries since trade via the ocean is significantly cheaper than
by road or air. Other geographic barriers include a region's agricultural
productivity and the prevalence of infectious disease, said Mellinger.

The United States and Western Europe both have ample access to ocean trade
routes and are located in temperate regions that are good for growing crops
and where it is difficult for infectious diseases, such as malaria, to
spread.

"Many of the countries with tropical or desert climates face many more
obstacles on the development path," said Mellinger. Harsher growing
climates, less sunlight in the growing season as compared with temperate
regions, too much rainfall or too little water, no easy way to get goods to
market, and conditions geared towards infectious diseases are some of the
obstacles cited.

Generating and Maintaining Wealth

To overcome the geographic barriers, Mellinger recommends development
strategies such as creating and distributing a vaccine for malaria,
promoting agricultural techniques that make crops more productive in
tropical and desert soils, and improving infrastructure that links
landlocked countries to the sea.

Another way to help economies grow, said Fix, is a reduction of barriers to
free trade. "A lot of countries seem to have benefited the further along
they go with that," he said.

As the developing countries keep developing their economies they should, in
theory, produce more and more of the high net worth individuals sought by
financial services firms such as Merrill Lynch who would like to help them
maintain their wealth.

Study of the high net worth individuals' investment strategies helps
financial advisors and consultants learn how best to preserve and continue
to grow their clients' capital. Diversification, said Wiggins, is key.

"What we see in high net worth individuals is that these people tend to be
very much diversified," said Wiggins. "They tend to be geared towards asset
preservation, they are not as likely to be concentrated in one or two asset
classes but spread their money across asset classes."

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Casey

    > This will be a surprise to some. Usually it is assumed,
    > by Americans, that it has most of the world`s "millionaires".

Oh, but we are catching up very quickly. As more and more
CEOs screw their employees and stockholders with their 2 million
dollar birthday parties, stupendously large golden parachutes, and
compensation based on anything other than the performance of the
company, the USA's percentage of millionaires will grow rapidly.


Casey

Earl Evleth

On 20/12/03 16:33, in article
ZYZEb.11994$, "Casey"
<> wrote:

    >> This will be a surprise to some. Usually it is assumed,
    >> by Americans, that it has most of the world`s "millionaires".
    >
    > Oh, but we are catching up very quickly. As more and more
    > CEOs screw their employees and stockholders with their 2 million
    > dollar birthday parties, stupendously large golden parachutes, and
    > compensation based on anything other than the performance of the
    > company, the USA's percentage of millionaires will grow rapidly.
    >

Since I know somebody who "made" 7 million on a stock deal with
a company and in the dot.com crash lost it all, it can be a two way
street. Another acquaintance went from 20 million dollars to
$700,000 in a short time. A divorce alone can cut a person's
net worth in half.

People who make a lot of money on paper often do it through leverage,
borrowing money to multiply the advantage.

If a deal goes bad, the leverage works the other
direction and will wipe out one`s investment. Banks operate
on low investment capitalization, less than 5%. So they
are playing with 95% of other peoples money. Japanese
banks are a good example of those holding "non-performing
assets", some two trillion dollars worth. If those all do
down, the bank does too, but their depositors are the ones
who end up holding the bag.

The stories of individuals making it rich make the news, but making
it poor is usually never talked about. Didn`t the Hunt brothers
perform in a similar fashion?

Greed is "good" but damn dangerous.

Earl

barney

In article <BC09F395.20384%>, (Earl
Evleth) wrote:

    > "Old" Europe Has More Millionaires than U.S., Study Finds

a pity the article didn't mention princesses, or massages!

David Johnstone

Several aspects of this report interest me. Just for starters
one is, how on earth do you get the data? The information
you need is bank balances and contents of share depots of
private persons. This information is in most countries not even
available to tax authorities without reasonable grounds for
suspecting a fraud, in other countries not at all. I suppose
you can make very rough estimates, but of all the shares and
other paper securities issued you don't even know how many
are held by companies, governments or other institutions, and
you have no basis for estimating the distribution of those in
private hands.
But OK, assuming the data is correct:
Secondly that the average millionaire has slightly under 4 million.
It would be interesting to see a histogram.
Thirdly: is there a figure for the total financial assets of all private
persons? And if you averaged this by dividing by the world
population, what would you get? Already the wealth of the
millionaires would contribute 4-5000 USD per head I think.
David

"Earl Evleth" <> wrote in message
news:BC09F395.20384%...
    > This will be a surprise to some. Usually it is assumed,
    > by Americans, that it has most of the world`s "millionaires".
    > In fact, looking at California Real Estate prices might
    > convince some people that it true just for California.
    > The estimate below is based on removing home real estate
    > from net worth.
    >...

Keith Anderson

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 15:33:13 GMT, "Casey" <> wrote:

    >> This will be a surprise to some. Usually it is assumed,
    >> by Americans, that it has most of the world`s "millionaires".
    >Oh, but we are catching up very quickly. As more and more
    >CEOs screw their employees and stockholders with their 2 million
    >dollar birthday parties, stupendously large golden parachutes, and
    >compensation based on anything other than the performance of the
    >company, the USA's percentage of millionaires will grow rapidly.
    >Casey

The scam in the UK is to bid for a "public-private partnership" deal
with the Government to bring "improvements" to the public sector. That
way, taxpayers money goes straight into the pockets of the corporate
fatcats. Our Third World Standard Railways (for example) are
swallowing more and more money whilst maintenance and service
standards decline and fares go up.

Deep Freud Moors

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 18:59:44 +0000, Keith Anderson
<> wrote:

    >On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 15:33:13 GMT, "Casey" <> wrote:
    >>> This will be a surprise to some. Usually it is assumed,
    >>> by Americans, that it has most of the world`s "millionaires".
    >>Oh, but we are catching up very quickly. As more and more
    >>CEOs screw their employees and stockholders with their 2 million
    >>dollar birthday parties, stupendously large golden parachutes, and
    >>compensation based on anything other than the performance of the
    >>company, the USA's percentage of millionaires will grow rapidly.
    >>Casey
    >The scam in the UK is to bid for a "public-private partnership" deal
    >with the Government to bring "improvements" to the public sector. That
    >way, taxpayers money goes straight into the pockets of the corporate
    >fatcats. Our Third World Standard Railways (for example) are
    >swallowing more and more money whilst maintenance and service
    >standards decline and fares go up.

This is happening all over the western world. It results in growth in
the private sector which is completely artificial, and essentially
means you are paying for something twice. And yes, the quality of
service is something that seems to consistently drop whenver things
are privatised. Just look at the 'marketisation' of the power
companies across the globe!

Eventually they may re-nationalise these services, at the expense of
the taxpayer, but they have to think up a good name for it that
doesn't sound like socialism. It's all just cheese-moving at the end
of the day, something that is effective in making people work harder.
---
DFM

Thomas Peel

David Johnstone schrieb:
    >
    > Several aspects of this report interest me. Just for starters
    > one is, how on earth do you get the data? The information
    > you need is bank balances and contents of share depots of
    > private persons.

As the report was compiled by precisely the same financial analysts who
manage these peoples money, it's not too difficult.
T.

This information is in most countries not even
    > available to tax authorities without reasonable grounds for
    > suspecting a fraud, in other countries not at all. I suppose
    > you can make very rough estimates, but of all the shares and
    > other paper securities issued you don't even know how many
    > are held by companies, governments or other institutions, and
    > you have no basis for estimating the distribution of those in
    > private hands.
    > But OK, assuming the data is correct:
    > Secondly that the average millionaire has slightly under 4 million.
    > It would be interesting to see a histogram.

Read the report yourself: http://www.cgey.com/finance/pubs/WWR2003.pdf


    > Thirdly: is there a figure for the total financial assets of all private
    > persons? And if you averaged this by dividing by the world
    > population, what would you get? Already the wealth of the
    > millionaires would contribute 4-5000 USD per head I think.
    > David
    >
    > "Earl Evleth" <> wrote in message
    > news:BC09F395.20384%...
    > > This will be a surprise to some. Usually it is assumed,
    > > by Americans, that it has most of the world`s "millionaires".
    > > In fact, looking at California Real Estate prices might
    > > convince some people that it true just for California.
    > > The estimate below is based on removing home real estate
    > > from net worth.
    > >...

David Johnstone

"Thomas Peel" <> wrote in message
news:...

    > As the report was compiled by precisely the same financial analysts who
    > manage these peoples money, it's not too difficult.
    > T.

There are thousands of banks and asset managers worldwide,
onshore and offshore and I doubt if all of them made their customer
databases available to Merrill Lynch. Why should they help a
competitor? In many countries there would also be legal problems
associated with selling or passing on customer data, even if it were
anonymised and aggregated. You would also need data from all
issuers of bonds for example, that would be most governments and
many big companies. And even then you wouldn't cover a lot of
investments like cash (a number of the millionaires are probably
criminal), private companies, property, art, or paper stocks and shares.

    > > Secondly that the average millionaire has slightly under 4 million.
    > > It would be interesting to see a histogram.
    > Read the report yourself: http://www.cgey.com/finance/pubs/WWR2003.pdf

Yes thank you. Most interesting. Page 14 has exactly the histogram
I was looking for.

David

Pj O'Donovan

Earl Evleth <> wrote in message news:<BC09F395.20384%>...> Earl
    >
    > ****
    >
    >
    > "Old" Europe Has More Millionaires than U.S., Study Finds
    >
    > John Roach
    > for National Geographic News
    > July 11, 2003

Wealthy Europeans find it easier than Americans to hide money in
places like Switzerland.

The USA is able to enforce its Marxist progressive and confiscatory
tax system
through its highly efficient Gestapo-like machine, the IRS.

Mussolini, Lenin, Hitler etc. all got it right when they concluded
that Socialism couldn't work without the totalitarianism of government
enforcement.