New Billionaire on Top

There’s been a little shuffling at the top of the billionaire list this year. Warren Buffet is now officially the world’s richest man. His net worth is now an estimated $62 billion up from $52 billion last year. His 10 billion dollar ride has ended the 13 year reign of his longtime friend Bill Gates who was been bumped down two notches to the world 3rd richest man. But come on...once you hit a few hundred million does it really matter anymore? Regardless here is a list of the top 20 richest people in the world.

1. Warren Buffett
2. Carlos Slim Helu
3. William Gates III
4. Lakshmi Mittal
5. Mukesh Ambani
6. Anil Ambani
7. Ingvar Kamprad
8. KP Singh
9. Oleg Deripaska
10. Karl Albrecht
11. Li Ka-shing
12. Sheldon Adelson
13. Bernard Arnault
14. Lawrence Ellison
15. Roman Abramovich
16. Theo Albrecht
17. Liliane Bettencourt
18. Alexei Mordashov
19. Prince Alwaleed
20. Mikhail Fridman

Are We In a Recession?

The talking head on business networks like CNBC have been debating the issue now for months, “are we going into recession?”. Some economists are saying yes we are while others are saying no. Well Warren Buffet has an answer for us…yes we are in a recession.

Based on the technical definition of a recession (two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth) we haven’t entered a recession. However, Mr.Buffet was recently quoted as saying “I would say, by any commonsense definition, we are in a recession”. That’s good enough for me. If the world most successful investor says we’re in a recession I believe him.