Yoshiaki Tsutsumi ranked as millionaire is now broke
Do you know this man? Probably not. His name is Yoshiaki Tsutsumi. He ranked by Forbes as the richest man in the world over 30 years ago.
Now he is worth $500m. Not broke, but a fraction of his past fortune, especially adjusted for inflation.
This happened due to the bursting of the Japanese bubble economy and his Seibu Railway was delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2004.
As the Japanese commercial, and residential, market fell, a lot of his wealth fell hard.
Here is the complete list of the top ten richest people (by wealth) in 1987
- Yoshiaki Tsutsumi — $20 billion
- Taikichiro Mori — $15 billion
- Shigeru Kobayashi — $7.5 billion
- Haruhiko Yoshimoto — $7 billion
- Salim Ahmed bin Mahfouz — $6.2 billion
- Hans and Gad Rausing — $6 billion
- Paul Reichmann and Brothers — $6 billion
- Yohachiro Iwaski — $5.6 billion
- Kenneth Thomson — $5.4 billion
- Keizo Saji — $4 billion
Many people haven’t heard of these people. Few of them are famous today, at least outside of Japan.
So, Bezos is unlikely to go broke, nor are any of the other billionaires on the current list, unless they are taken to the cleaners by a corruption scandal, prison etc, which won’t affect most people.
What is more likely is that fortunes rise, and fall, because most of today’s wealth is traded on stock markets.
There will be some former billionaires just like Yoshiaki. It might not be Bezos, but it could be, or somebody else near the top of the current list.
That is why rich lists are very misleading. They don’t focus on income, but wealth.
Wealth can rise and fall in seconds. If Amazon falls by 10% today, or rises by the same figure, that won’t affect Bezos’ income instantly, unless he sells the stock.
So, I would take headlines like “Bezos makes more in one hour than his whole workforce does in a month’, or “Bezos loses $5billion in a day”, with a pinch of salt.
“Bezos’ wealth fluctuated” is more accurate but also boring, so I wouldn’t expect the media to report it like that.