And Another Thing | 24 January 2009

It is a sobering thought that a year ago the nominal wealth of the world, as registered in bank holdings, stock and bond prices, real estate and company valuations, was twice what it is today. Where has all the money gone? Was it there in the first place? The $50 billion ‘invested’ with Bernard Madoff seems to have simply disappeared into a celestial, or infernal, black hole, leaving ‘not a rack behind’. I heard the other day of a man supposedly worth $6 billion a few months ago, now down to $500 million, so technically he is not even a billionaire any more. He did not actually do anything to cause his fortune to be divided by 12: just sat appalled, watching it vanish, on TV. He might just as well have cast it at random on half a dozen roulette wheels, and watched it spin and click its way into oblivion.