It’s often surprising to find immediate corroboration of a theme for blog entries that appear in this space. Not two days after the previous June 24 & 25 blog items were published here about “The Rich Getting Richer", Merrill Lynch and the Cap Gemini Group released their annual World Wealth Report. In 2006, the world’s wealthiest saw their combined riches grow by over 11%! Fully 800,000 more people were added in 2006 to the rolls of folks who hold over $1 million in financial assets (not including their primary homes), up from 8.7 million such individuals in 2005. The combined wealth of these fortunate few totals over $37.2 trillion. That's “trillion” with a “t”, and adds up to a fourth of the entire world’s total wealth, about three times the US GNP. Of course, the US leads the pack of such rich people.

But hey, these rich folks are generous. In 2006, the donated $285 billion to philanthropic causes. What’s that you say? That $285 billion is only 0.8% of their combined wealth? Hmmm. Well, at least entrepreneurs gave more than twice as much in philanthropy as those who inherited their wealth. Oh yeah, among those 9.5 millionaires, there are a few super-rich people; some 95,000 of them, who have assets exceeding $30 million each, which combined  represents $13.1 trillion. Their assets grew by 11% in 2006 too.

On the very same day that the aforementioned World Wealth Report was issued, a story appeared in Business Week Online, setting forth what some of the rich are doing with their money these days: they are buying and/or building huge houses! As the article states, “As the rest of the housing market struggles, the very high end is thriving. The Dallas-based Institute for Luxury Home Marketing estimates that home sales at the $5 million-plus price range rose 11% in 2006, compared to a 8.4% decline in overall housing market sales.”

If you can tolerate reading the whole Business Week Online article, here’s the URL: http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/070627/jun2007db20070626819685.html?.v=1&.pf=real-estate