Drinks On These 5.2 Million People

At this point you’ve heard the story line for one full year — the pandemic created a yawning chasm between the rich and the less (financially) fortunate.

Yesterday investment bank Credit Suisse shined a bright light on just how large the chasm has become.

Big Bills

All told, the Credit Suisse report found that aggregate wealth accumulated by households rose by roughly $28.7 trillion in 2020 as central banks flooded financial markets with easy money, serving to inflate asset prices. The specifics were more revealing:

• Globally, an estimated 5.2 million people became millionaires last year while the number of those worth at least $50 million increased by almost a quarter.
• The combined wealth among individuals with a net worth of at least $1m had grown nearly fourfold since 2000 to $191.6tn, while their share of global wealth rose from about 35% to 46%.

The Takeaway: “The contrast between what has happened to household wealth and what is happening in the wider economy can never have been more stark,” the Credit Suisse report said. At the other end of the spectrum, an estimated 2.9 billion people (or 55% of all adults) had less than $10,000 in net assets.