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As the Trends Journal stated, when the COVID War was launched and politicians closed down “non-essential” small businesses while giving free financial reign to the “essential” multinationals and the Wall Street Gang, the rich would get richer. They did and they are still getting richer, while the poor keep getting poorer. As we had reported, the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame research shows the poverty rate in the United States surged from 9.3 percent in June 2020 to 11.7 percent, notching up the biggest increase in a single year since the government began tracking poverty in 1960.
Globally, according to ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), the total number of poor people rose to 209 million by the end of 2020, which is 22 million more people than in the previous year.
And now, according to an article appearing 23 June in the Financial Times, a new Credit Suisse report, co-authored by economists Anthony Shorrocks, James Davies and Rodrigo Lluberas, notes that some of the greatest increases in wealth in the last year have occurred in those countries most affected by COVID-19. In the U.S. and Europe, for example, total wealth increased by about 10 percent.
More Millionaires, More Multi-Millionaires
Some 5.2 million people became millionaires (in U.S. dollars) in the past year; about a third of them from the U.S. At the same time, global membership in the “net worth of $50 million or more club” has increased by almost 25 percent, bringing that number up to over 215,000.
Part of this is attributable to inflation, causing the value of assets to rise. Higher valuations of residential property and equity raised the global aggregate household net worth (calculated on assets minus debts) by 4.1 percent, to about $418.3 trillion, despite the economic damage and personal hardship wrought by the draconian lockdown rules which destroyed the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions.
As to the wealth gap, the report found that it had grown larger on the whole as well as in most countries. Some 2.9 trillion persons, about 55 percent of the world’s adult population, had net assets of less than $10,000.
The wealthiest people have seen the most benefit from the COVID War, as we reported in the June 2020 article, “BILLIONAIRES REAP PANDEMIC PROFITS.” The Credit Suisse report states that the increase in wealth among those whose worth already exceeded $50 million would be “a very high rise in any year, but it is striking in a year experiencing social and economic turmoil.”
TREND FORECAST: As Gerald Celente has long forecast, “when people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it.” The poorer people become, the higher crime rates will rise and so too will anti-establishment political movements. There will also be sharp increases in demonstrations and protests in nations where the rich have gotten much richer and poverty, crime, government corruption and violence have dramatically increased.