Billionaires Have More Cash Than They Know What To Do With
September 23, 2014

What would it take, I wonder, for people to ever get to that "heads on pikes" moment:

Billionaires are holding mountains of cash, offering the latest sign that the ultra-wealthy are nervous about putting more money into today's markets. According to the new Billionaire Census from Wealth-X and UBS, the world's billionaires are holding an average of $600 million in cash each—greater than the gross domestic product of Dominica.

That marks a jump of $60 million from a year ago and translates into billionaires' holding an average of 19 percent of their net worth in cash.

"This increased liquidity signals that many billionaires are keeping their money on the sidelines and waiting for the optimal moment to make further investments," the study said.Indeed, billionaires' cash holdings far exceed their investments in real estate. Their real-estate holdings average $160 million per billionaire, or about one-fifth of their cash holdings.

So much money, they're giving their kids their very own hedge funds!

What do you get for the young man who's already got a safety net made of golden threads brocaded with itty bitty Mercedes-Benzes? His very own hedge fund, where he can play with millions of dollars like a real live bizness-man!

Although the smart money of institutions has begun abandoning hedge funds after recognizing that they are first and foremost ways to extract huge fees from their investors, hedge funds are still a multitrillion-dollar business—an ideal field for the enterprising young man without any real talents, but with access to a large pool of money, to get into for a few years, before he realizes that succeeding in it is much harder than he thought.

The Wall Street Journal notes that not one, not two, but quite a few sons of hedge fund titans are now starting their own hedge funds. They're capitalized, of course, with money from dad, as well as "friends and family," a group that, if you are the son of a wealthy hedge fund titan, tends to be full of people who can invest a few million in junior's little business venture without thinking much of it.

Meanwhile, more Americans than ever are living in poverty. Whee!

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