Billionaires Double Their Numbers Despite/Because Of The 2009 Financial Crisis

Since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2009, inequality continues to rise and surpass record level after record level. We have addressed the issue several times already, yet studies keep coming out with more “surprising” information proving that the policies of our politicians to save us from the GFC has only made things worse.

According to a new Oxfam report, the number of billionaires in the world has increased from 793 in March of 2009, to 1646. The total wealth that these people hold has swelled 124% to $5.4 trillion. The 85 richest people now own as much money as HALF of the world’s poorest. Or, in other words, more than 3.6 billion people. These 85 have earned more than $240 billion over the last year, the equivalent of $656 million a day or $1 million a MINUTE.

According to the report, while the rich have experienced record growth in wealth, some one million women and girls have died during childbirth because they had not received basic healthcare services. Some 57 million kids do not even receive a formal education.

“In a world where hundreds of millions of people are living without access to clean drinking water and without enough food to feed their families, small elite have more money than they could spend in several lifetimes,” Oxfam Chief Executive, Mark Goldring, noted. “The consequences of extreme inequality are harmful to everyone—it robs millions of people of better life chances and fuels crime, corruption and even violent conflict. Put simply, it is holding back efforts to end poverty,” Goldring added.

“Far from being a driver of economic growth, extreme inequality is a barrier to prosperity for most people on the planet,” said Oxfam International Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima. “Inequality hinders growth, corrupts politics, stifles opportunity and fuels instability while deepening discrimination, especially against women,” she added.

Chief Economist of the Bank of England, Andrew Haldane, goes a step further, warning that capitalism could be sowing the seeds for its own destruction if bankers continued to fail to acknowledge a moral obligation to work for a more equitable society. “Just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself,” Haldane told the Independent in May.

Haldane also made waves when he had praised the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2012 for taking a stand against economic inequality. “Occupy has been successful in its efforts to popularize the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason—they are right,” Haldane said at a London debate hosted by Occupy Economics.

Even Federal Reserve Chairperson, Janet Yellen, blasted the rising inequality, for which ironically she and her predecessors had at least some small role in causing. “The past several decades have seen the most sustained rise in inequality since the 19th century after more than 40 years of narrowing inequality following the Great Depression,” Yellen said last month. “By some estimates, income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then.”

“I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation’s history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity,” Yellen added. The Federal Chairwoman also noted that, “the past several decades of widening inequality has often involved stagnant or falling living standards for many families.”

University of California Berkeley economist, Emmanuel Saez, found in a 2012 study that 93% of all income gains since 2010 had gone to the top one percent. That study followed a 2011 report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office which revealed that the income of the top 1% of wealthiest US households rose 275% over the past 30 years, while the poorest 20% of US households gained just 18% over the same period.