BS: Who has all The Money?

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Dec 10 - 02:36 PM

Awkwright and the other big wheels of the late Industrial revolution.
The Medici, etc, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Dec 10 - 05:11 PM

Some posts above have cited evidence that XX% of the money is now in the hands of .000Y% of the population, but similar distributions seem to be prevalent among companies as well.

While the statement is rather non-specific, a recent NY Times article -
Silicon bubble shows signs of reinflating - includes:

"Microsoft, Apple ... Google … Those three companies have about $90 billion in cash on their books. McKinsey & Company calculates that the largest software and hardware companies have enough excess cash on hand to buy nearly all of the tech industry's medium-sized companies." (italics added)

Quite obviously, those cash reserves are not being used to create jobs for burger flippers in order to share the wealth.

It would have been helpful had the commentator said the largest (N - some number) companies might buy (K - another number) of the (Y - number of companies extant) but that commentator is obviously an advisor to the wealthy and doesn't need "real numbers" to speak to the rest of us.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Dec 10 - 08:32 PM

These tech industries are pretty large, but are well down in the corporate rankngs.
To digress further-
Apple in number 75, although it has a market value of $190 billion.

The largest in market value is Petrochina, $334 billion, although it ranks number 12 on the list.
In order of market value, if you are thinking of buying a corporation-

PetroChina
ExxonMobil
ICBC (China, banking)
Wal-Mart
China Mobile
Petrobras (Brazil) and Berkshire Hathaway, tied

Forbes rank-
JPMorganChase
General Electric
Bank of America
ExxonMobil
ICBC
Santander (Spain)
Wells Fargo
HSBC (UK)
Royal Dutch Shell
BP

(Above rankings all from Forbes)

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 04 Dec 10 - 09:50 PM

Q - those are only the Public Companies which have public shares. No mention of the Real Wealth held by Private Companies & Private Trusts - these days most rich individuals hive off most of their wealth to Private Trusts, about which we will never find out much that they don;t want us to know.

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: Slag
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 01:35 AM

Yup on the railroaders and other industrialists. And what did they do with their loot? The smart ones went into banking. Bankers can make money literally out of nothing with the illusion of having tangible assets and making loans accordingly. This is well documented for those willing to discover it. Caution, you will see red and be irate when you learn their tricks.

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 08:23 AM

As Foolestroupe notes, only publicly traded companies are required to tell anyone what they're worth. As an example, the small local company named Koch Industries (maybe some of you have heard of it) is privately owned - and hence one of the "small businesses" that the Repugnocrats say must be protected from paying any taxes.

They have a really impressive big office here, and they appear to be prosperous enough to be making at least a little bit of money.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: Bobert
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 08:41 AM

It has been reported by several sources that the Fortune 500 corporations are sitting on $1.7T in un-invested cash...

That is not good... The GNP (growth, employment, recovery, etc) is dependent on people/companies spending money, not hording it...

That is the best argument against extending the Bush tax cuts to the rich... They won't spend it either... They'll sit on it and not spend it...

Neither create any jobs...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 12:38 PM

I still think folkies have the money.

You just have to look at the instruments they all own.

I know I couldn't afford to buy all those expensive instruments.

In which case, the people that make the instruments must be pretty well off as well.

And just look at the number of people that attend Folk Festivals that cost a fortune. Where does all that money come from.

Discuss

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 03:04 PM

Un-invested cash loses value, as a result of changing conditions, inflation, currency re-evaluation in relation to other currencies, etc.
Only the stupid sit on their holdings.

Koch is a good example of a company, private it may be, that knows how to invest and progress.
Koch produces 800,000 bbl oil/day. Its company ownerships includes fertilizers, polution equipment, forest, pipeline, financial trading, fibers and polymers, paper and ranching entities among others, either in whole or in partnerships.
It has some 85,000 well-trained employees to handle its operations.

Its revenue in 2007 was $98 billion; I have not looked into its profit share or what was necessary to the operation of its many businesses.
Data from Forbes, NY Times, etc.

The company has a poor rating on environment, with fines for spills and other shortcomings, lobbys for oil and gas interests, maintains several conservative think tanks and contributes to conservative politicians.

Subject: RE: BS: Who has all The Money?
From: Slag
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 07:43 PM

Just a tiny footnote Q, There is not an oil company that has not had spills. It just goes with the territory. More important is how often and how good a clean up they do.