The latest issue of the Knight Frank World Wealth Report will not make happy reading for those of us who thought they were seeing tentative signs that Putin’s Russia was making good progress on “nationalizing” its elites (e.g. multiple wealth amnesties, local Courchevel, local Hogwarts, etc).
First, Russia’s wealth structure remains extremely lop-sided. While there are ~100 Russian billionaires (about as many as in Germany, and twice the number in the UK), there are only about 2,620 Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (>$50 million), versus 8,070 in Germany and 4,580 in the UK.
UHNWI are a much better proxy for capitalistic dynamism than billionaire plutocrats, especially in a country like Russia, where most of them are made their wealth through their political connections.
Judging by their desire to emigrate and second passport possession rates, Russian UHNWI – we can comfortably use the term, since 2,620 of the 2,870 Russia and CIS UHNWI are specified as Russian – are effectively more comprador than the culture that gave the term its name.
Russian UHNWI don’t seem to want to buy homes in their own country: Russia isn’t a top property investment source for Russian UHNWI, whereas even for Latin Americans, Brazil and Mexico are.
The luxury consumption choices of Russian UHNWI are quite telling of their human capital, thrift, and patriotic investment priorities, or lack thereof.
Most popular flight routes: Moscow/Nice, presumably for the status signalling shopping, versus New York/Washington D.C. and Los Angeles/Las Vegas in the US, presumably for business and pleasure, respectively.
Russians have more yachts than anyone else other than the US, which has 10x+ as many UHNWI.
Moreover, the list of the world’s very biggest yachts is completely dominated by Russians and Arabs. The first white person on that list is at #12.
It’d be interesting if Eastern Central Europe was separated out. Even better, if you could check countries separately. I know a wealthy (by Hungarian standards, maybe $5,000,000) guy in Hungary, and he mentioned he was thinking about going abroad. He didn’t like the corruption or the fact that Fidesz guys occasionally blackmail people out of their businesses.
He, I wonder whether you read Polish blogger/publicists, or whether you coined that term independently, or whether Polish publicists borrowed that term from elsewhere…
I wonder if all of the commotion we’ve been having in the UK is due to some angry (unable to leave the country at all) Silovik wanting, indirectly, to stick it to these guys. There’s semi-serious talk of expropriating abramovich now.
Soviet terminology: http://bse.sci-lib.com/article063587.html
Black pill-ish statement
From the Hogwarts article
This is not a new problem.
If anything, it is getting less worse.
It will be improvement in the capital flight situation after this school opens, as parents are paying tuition fees for the schools inside the country, rather than as much in the UK/Switzerland boarding schools.
Thanks! I did not know this is a term borrowed from soviet terminology. It’s nowadays very often used by Polish rightwing publishers to describe our so called “elites” which cooperate with the EU to “civilize” the primitive Polish native “Sarmatians”.
I know a rich girl (her father’s business is something to do with China). I remember she said that devaluation is cool, because she buys everything with German Deutsche Bank card (i.e. converted from euros).
So this is how I imagine situation – her father’s business is earning in China, and the money is put into Germany (probably other places), and (some of it) spent in Russia.
The whole Great Soviet Encyclopedia must be very interesting to read.
Unfortunately, in Russian, the copyright is privatized to a publishing company (ironic), and you have to pay a lot even to buy the digital editions.
I have seen reports that Sberbank and Alfabank reported returning capital from Switzerland and elsewhere in recent times.
Great article and charts … quite interesting how the world’s 130,000 high net worth elites, love the UK so much and wish to gather there
They are not worried about Brexit
They are not worried about British society going to hell for average folks
They are not worried about the UK getting all pozzed and thousands of people being arrested for some minor remark on Facebook
They are not worried about the UK gov getting taken over by ‘socialist’ Jeremy Corbyn … who coincidentally, grew up as a neighbour of some of the world’s wealthiest family, the Rothschilds, with Jeremy’s dad working for Victor Rothschild on ‘secret’ stuff during World War II
It’s just like in the old pre-internet ‘conspiracy’ newsletters, from Lyndon LaRouche and so many others … so often saying it’s the City of London from which the world is ruled
https://saboteur365.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/im-not-saying-its-a-conspiracy-but-its-a-conspiracy.jpg
It’s because of the UK legal system, which is trusted more than local legal systems.
For example, when Russia loaned the Ukraine $3 billion, they did the loan in the UK.
And now Russia is suing Ukraine for this in the UK (with the British High Court deciding the case).
https://www.ft.com/content/eee0b5c4-4f6c-3fd8-9fda-ad69b2852b39
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/sep/04/london-abramovich-v-berezovsky-court-case
are effectively more comprador than the culture that gave the term its name.
The term was favored by a school in economic sociology peddling something called ‘dependency theory’ 40 years ago. The more rigorous social researchers among them could never substantiate anything but fragments of it and it died out as a research program (at least at American universities). More cynical sorts might suggest it was attractive because it placed the blame for Latin American economic problems on a menu of acceptable bogies.
I’d tend to favor the hypothesis that the descriptive statistics you’re showing (which may have had very unreliable sampling frames) show hedging behavior by people who have something to lose, so you’ll see higher levels of expatriation and plans for expatriation where property rights are understood as less secure and where it is understood that there are loci which would be more secure. Latin America has famously haphazard land titles, relatively dysfunctional court systems, high rates of street crime, and a fairly recent history of triple-digit inflation (most places). It’s also suffered neo-Peronism now and again over the last 20 years (very destructive neo-Peronism in the case of Venezuela). However patriotic you are, if you’ve something to lose and hope to enjoy it, contingency plans to decamp to Miami are prudent.
A very good article.
What’s funny is how this article has so few comments and all rather short.
Compare that to all that blabbing about new Putin “wonderweapons” and such.
Most likely this isn’t important for the teams involved (“bigger dick” stuff), especially the “Team Russia”.
My take is….what will bring a real grief to the regime in Kremlin is the reality depicted in this article.
Now…why the regime wasted the historical opportunity to make that right, years ago, is another matter. Not important, naturally. Not as important as the new “vaporware” (not mine but an interesting expression) and its …ah..huge impact on the power play today.
That…fascination..with hardware and not with core values of the society brought down the previous regimes there.
So…we’ll see how is that going to work with the current one.
What historical opportunity are talking about?
Why would it bring “real grief to the regime in Kremlin”?
The Kremlin itself was pushing for West/Eurointegration of Russia till the early 2010.
That is a reflection of that.
The question
based on
Is, sort of, interesting.
I mean, if you need that answer, something isn’t quite right. Actually a lot isn’t quite right.
Anyway….the answer would be:
The historical opportunity that after “Yeltsin” era a new, correct, vision for Russian society was created and, more importantly, implemented.
We just got something……similar.
The most important part the obscene disparity of wealth acquisition between the very top and the rest.
And this
is even more……interesting.
The last time the lower 80 % of people in that part of the world weren’t happy with above-mentioned disparity there were some…….changes. Those changes did bring some grief to those 20 % on the top.
No reason for a different outcome this time.
That is exactly what Kremlin/Russian elite wanted.
They wanted stability, not great changes.
If there was a lost historical opportunity, it was in the early 1990s.
Too simplified. These changes only happened after the system collapsed.
I don’t think there was any opportunity in the 1990s, because oil prices went down to $13 a barrel. The oil prices mean it always going to be a disaster decade, even without the political events.
The opportunity now is to put the enormous oil profits of today into a diversification of the economy and development of future industries, before it is too late.
Probably during the 2030s, oil demand and therefore prices will be crashing like the 1990s – but due to EVs and electrification even of shipping which is on horizon during the 2030s decade.
So the 2020s will be the key period to endure future industries can be developed in time inside the country, before oil prices start to crash in the 2030s.
Yeah.
Blame everything on Yeltsin.
Makes sense.
Curious, though.
We’ve been told, ad nauseam, how simply “awesome” Putin is; how he is the greatest leader we’ve seen for quite some time.
And, yet, the same guy (and his team) haven’t been able to create that opportunity, let alone exploit it.
Ah, yes, that’s all the part of that multidimensional chess play of his.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
And it collapsed based on…….something….unknowable.
Not based on people losing faith in all that. Those very 80%.
Those who got tired of seeing how “they” can have all that which “us” can’t, and even more, us being always told that’s just not good to have.
As now, seeing all that obscene wealth on top again while “we” are struggling to make ends meet. Again being told that all that is simply wrong to have, and similar BS.
Makes sense too.
I would be a little more skeptical of this “Wealth Report Attitudes Survey” which surveys a relatively small number of private bankers and wealth advisers, not the actual UHNWI.
And what is this supposed to mean:
You don’t consider Rashnikov white? He’s an ethnic Russian to my knowledge. And Geffen isn’t any less Jewish than Abramovich, who is #2 on that list. Maybe you meant “white American” or something?
You are as stupid as the people who blame everything on Putin.
It is never just one person to blame.
Why do I have to repeat myself, fool?
The Putin era has been a much more stable era than the first decade of the Russian Federation.
It collapsed because they entered a war they were not prepared for and then managed to mismanage the war effort. And all of that happened in the middle of stressful industrialization and after they had lost another war.
Imperial Russian minister Peter Durnovo predicted the collapse years before it happened.
It’s a joke about the sort of cultures that worship big yachts.
Hahaha…..not easy to keep those “Eastern” communication skills in check here, a?
The….attitude.
You can take an “Easterner” out of Eastern cultural space into West, but you can’t really take that…ahm…”culture” out of most of them. That familiar “noise” to cover up that deep insecurity, even confusion.
Roots and such.
Good.
Just keep at it.
Good luck.
Well, the 5 biggest yachts on that list were all built by Germans, for 4 Muslims and a Jew.
The majority of the 20 biggest yachts were built in Germany and the majority of the owners are Arabs from the peninsula aka real Arabs.
Despite there being far more billionaires in East Asia than in Arabia there is only one East Asian on that list, way down, and he is from Malaysia. Which may explain why he caught this muslim bug.
That seriously pisses me off; couldn’t find anything more worthy to pursue with their money, eh? What a stinking waste…
Other ways of looking at that wealth chart:
The Eurosphere (Europe including Russia, the Americas, Australasia) has ~88,000 ultra rich citizens versus ~42,ooo for the rest of the world (Asia, Middle-East, Africa).
The West (Anglosphere, European Union, Norway, Switzerland) has ~81,000 ultra rich vs ~30,000 for East Asia (Sinosphere, Japan, Korea).
The Anglosphere (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) has 51,000 ultra rich vs 17,300 for it’s main challenger the Sinosphere (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore).
What ethnicity is Viktor Rashnikov?
Barring a surprise upstart, US vs China will decide who the 21st century will be named after. Right now the US still has a comfortable lead.
Btw, I should have used “Greater China” instead of “Sinosphere” in the previous post. The word Sinosphere is already taken to include Japan, Korea, Vietnam.
Billionaires are not “elites” in Russia. They’re just stooges for money laundering purposes.
That’s not surprising in a country that has always (since the Middle Ages at least) ran under an autarchic state-capitalist regime.
As always, it turns out that the real world doesn’t conform to Anglo-Saxon sensibilities. The horror.
I have seen it as well; don’t recall exact numbers but I think so far it was in the ball park of several hundred millions, which is peanuts compared to the several hundred billions offshore. The trend is in the right direction, we will see… Now there are some reports about willing British emigres to repatriate (up to 15!! oligarchs seeking pardon – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5352661/Russian-billionaires-London-beg-Putin-return-home.html)
Also of note, in the last 5 years, the share of Russian enterprises subscribing to Russian law increased 3x – from 10% to 34% (https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2017/10/04/736384-deofshorizatsiya) Maybe we are at a comprador turning point.
That’s an encouraging dynamic.
On the other hand, Sinophere’s billionaire growth rate is probably very fast. So the fact that they are already at more than 1/3rd of the US level is actually really impressive.
I’d imagine it actually also means that the number of Chinese billionaires is going to overtake the US sooner than many/most people realize. That has happened many times already, supercomputers being a great example.
I’m also not convinced that the number of very rich people measured in US dollars is the most important metric in determining which country is going to “win” this – or for that matter any other – century.
That’s a result of the hostile US sphere policies. But it’s good nevertheless.
I meant America vs China in general not just in the number of ultra rich. The ultra rich metric just happens to be one of the charts posted by Karlin, to which I was responding. It certainly is a more significant metric than the size of yachts.
@peterAUS @quartermaster (amongst others)
I do not have any skin in the game, and therefore no strong opinion about Putin either way, but I am nonetheless flabbergasted by the ease with which several commenters (including, but certainly not limited to, those whose handles I have mentioned above) call
him (or his associates; or his government; or even his “régime”) CRIMINAL — my emphasis added.
Indeed, Putin and his associates might very well be guilty of some crimes, I am nobody to either dispute nor defend such an accusation. However, even if true, how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent victims’ death can be indisputably and directly attributed to “Putin’s crimes”?
In contrast, the massive murderous, if not genocidal, tally of many a “democratic”, “transparent”, “virtuous” Western leader is just plainly visible to anyone who has eyes to see. What do the peterAUS and quartermasters and their ilk have to say of the many millions of innocent Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Lybians, Afghanis, just to name a few, who have been murdered as the direct result of the criminal lies and deceptions of the Bushes, Obamas, Blairs, Sarközys, Aznars, or other lesser treacherous leeches who presided at the helm of their puppet governments (e.g., Australia)?
The obvious double-standard approach of these Putinophobes demonstrates that they are morally repulsive, or intellectually bankrupt — or, more likely: both.
By the way and for what it’s worth I am an American, who believes in the original vision of the Founders, namely: a Republic, not an Empire. I believe the worst criminals of our times are to be found at the top of the US regime which has entirely perverted the nature of what America was to be about. I had put some limited hopes into Trump; hopes that have now all but vanished.
By the way and for what it’s worth I am an American,
And an innumerate one too.
@art deco
Your absence of rational arguments, combined with your stupid yet pretentious pseudo-ironic tone is self-defeating.
You have evidently failed to logically defeat event a single one of the in-passing comments I made above.
If English is too hard for you I will happily switch to Italian, Spanish, French, Spanish or Russian, Latin, or Koine Greek. See — I am making it easy for you.