WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING

In 1990, I founded University Scholarships for South African Students, or USSAS, a one-man effort to raise money for bursaries for poor Black young men and women in South Africa who been admitted to historically Black universities but could not afford to matriculate.  Over the next twenty-five years, during almost forty trips to South Africa, I met a wide assortment of South Africans.  Quite the most unforgettable character was Renfrew Christie, a White English-speaking political scientist with an Oxford degree who spent a number of years in jail for his part in the effort to blow up a nuclear power reactor.  For many years, Renfrew served as the Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of the Western Cape, one of the best historically Black universities in the country.

Since his retirement, Renfrew has been circulating interesting material to a circle of friends, among whom I am privileged to count myself as one.  Yesterday, he sent me a link to a fascinating document, prepared by a firm called CapGemini, which I recommend to you.  It details the growth world-wide in the numbers and affluence of HNWI, which is to say High Net Worth Individuals.  Its concern is not, as you might expect, to highlight the appalling wealth inequality in the world, but rather to warn wealth managers that BigTech, which is to say data driven advice about investing, is cutting into the market share and profits of traditional money mnanagers.

I cannot create a link, but if you Google World Wealth report 2017 and go to Capgemini, you can find it.

Take a look at some of the tables and charts and such.  The amount of money floating around the world looking for a home is staggering.  CapGemini predicts that it will soon reach one hundred trillion dollars.