How Slim Got Huge
That's just an awesome title from Foreign Policy Magazine about the new King of Wealth; the richest person in the world Carlos Slim.
"What, then, to make of the man who in the summer of 2007 appears to have replaced Gates as the world?s richest person? His name is Carlos Slim Hel�. Today, his fortune stands at more than $59 billion?and grew, on average, more than $1 billion a month last year. What kind of world are we living in now? Slim has been widely accused of monopolistic practices; he catapulted himself to the top spot on the back of his company Tel�fonos de M�xico, or Telmex, which has a 92 percent stranglehold on his country?s local fixed-line market. Slim?s business empire, the scope of which is largely unprecedented in modern economic history, ranges from cigarettes to airlines, from electric cables to floor tiles. In all, Slim?s net worth is equivalent to a stunning 6.6 percent of Mexico?s gross domestic product (GDP), easily eclipsing Gates (0.4 percent of U.S. GDP) and even John D. Rockefeller at his peak (slightly less than 2 percent in 1937). Although it may be unsurprising to see such gross wealth disparity in Latin America, what do we make of the growing list of billionaires in countries such as China, India, and Russia that supposedly represent the global economy?s future? Are we entering a new era of robber barons? Does the shift of investment and production to emerging markets herald a rise in ?crony capitalism? worldwide? Or does the rapidly accumulating wealth of Slim and his ilk merely signify an undesirable byproduct of a very desirable process?the spread of free-market capitalism around the globe?" (Foreign Policy)
"What, then, to make of the man who in the summer of 2007 appears to have replaced Gates as the world?s richest person? His name is Carlos Slim Hel�. Today, his fortune stands at more than $59 billion?and grew, on average, more than $1 billion a month last year. What kind of world are we living in now? Slim has been widely accused of monopolistic practices; he catapulted himself to the top spot on the back of his company Tel�fonos de M�xico, or Telmex, which has a 92 percent stranglehold on his country?s local fixed-line market. Slim?s business empire, the scope of which is largely unprecedented in modern economic history, ranges from cigarettes to airlines, from electric cables to floor tiles. In all, Slim?s net worth is equivalent to a stunning 6.6 percent of Mexico?s gross domestic product (GDP), easily eclipsing Gates (0.4 percent of U.S. GDP) and even John D. Rockefeller at his peak (slightly less than 2 percent in 1937). Although it may be unsurprising to see such gross wealth disparity in Latin America, what do we make of the growing list of billionaires in countries such as China, India, and Russia that supposedly represent the global economy?s future? Are we entering a new era of robber barons? Does the shift of investment and production to emerging markets herald a rise in ?crony capitalism? worldwide? Or does the rapidly accumulating wealth of Slim and his ilk merely signify an undesirable byproduct of a very desirable process?the spread of free-market capitalism around the globe?" (Foreign Policy)
posted by Dody G. at 10:35 AM
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