I know the idea seems far-fetched but in we know that secret billionaires hiding in plain sight exist. In fact, in one year Bloomberg reporters discovered 90 billionaires who hadn't previously been counted on the major lists of wealthy individuals (archive.is
I think the answer is yes, even though a trillion dollars is an enormous sum and close to the near entirety of Russia's GDP, when we consider the fact that the value of assets far-out number a country's gdp I think its not impossible.
For instance, by some estimates the US economy is measured at 18 trillion dollars GDP but the total assets of the US comes to ten times that (archive.is
How much the world itself is worth seems to vary, I've heard it figures thrown out between 220 trillion conservatively and one quadrillion. The derivatives market itself is 1.2 quadrillion from what I hear. I'm not the world's smartest person when comes to understanding high finance but to me it seems that with that much money/things to own in the world the chance of someone breaking the 1 trillion mark is likely. Someone's public fortune doesn't necessarily translate into all the different assets they control or have a controlling stake in.
Is there any material backing for the speculation that trillionaires might exist? Yes, two cases that I know of, the House of Saud is considered to be worth more then one trillion and the Emperor of Japan is estimated to have stolen 100 billion (1 trillion in today's money) in bullion and cultural artifacts during WWII. It's thought that the US recovered the majority of it and recycled it through the financial system with the aim of fighting the Cold War.
Some other criticisms that have been made of the Forbes and other business press lists that determines who the public thinks of as the world's wealthiest people is that they don't include the prominent business families (Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Krupp etc.), heads of state or any aristocracy. On paper Queen Elizabeth is "poor" even if she's still considered the world's biggest landowner as far as I know. According to American yellow journalism Putin is richer then Bill Gates, so how could he be richer then Bill according to mainstream media logic yet we should at the same time suppose that there's no one else attaining some stratospheric unheard of fortunes that we don't know about?
Wasn't Rockefeller considered to be worth 300 billion in current dollars at one time? Even if you just assume that wealth is spread evenly over a numerous Rockefeller clan even low-yield investments on that much money would've netted a considerable fortune over more then a century.
I admit this is all mostly speculation but I want to hear opinions on the possibility of the existence of hidden trillionaires? Do you think they exist? Who do you think are plausible candidates? Where do you even invest/put that much money?
I know some of you do believe in this. The question is, can you prove it? For instance, I'm inclined to believe it but I haven't seen strong proof so far. I believe we should at least weight the pros and cons, because according to the bourgeois press the age of open trillionaires will be here in a few decades if capitalism continues.