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Not on Forbes list either?

http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/

I've read their wealth is estimated between 20 - 50 trillion.

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Could you elaborate?  

Several different lists are being tossed about here ....

Richest men in America
http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/

Richest men in the world
http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/


Are there people who don't want to be listed on these lists?   Sure.

The Roman Catholic Church is considered one of these, but they still get partially listed sometimes as they are hands down the richest single organization in the world.  

So much so that their books are run at the diocese level only which puts the revenue and assets into much smaller localized buckets that can be more correctly reflected in terms of the local landowning and fiscal reporting laws and such.  

Such reports are never rolled up world wide because the Catholic Church doesn't really care -- they are into balancing yearly cash flow on the local level so as to NEVER have to sell an asset once they get hands on it.

..... and oh yeah, and churches don't have to pay taxes or have to report anything anyway..... it was written into the laws of each country when the country was founded.


Since the Roman Catholic Church supposedly "owned" all of South America whenever the Portuguese and Spaniards first took it over, then the Church graciously chose to split South America up and granted the use of chunks of it back to the various occupying nations as land grants (which included strict charges that all natives would be converted 100% or the land grant would revert back to the Church).

... it all really gets kinda fuzzy over the centuries as to what the Catholic Church really does own or not.    If you think of your local Jesuit Priest as your landlord's general overseer for the area then you won't be too far off what was the original mark down there in South America ....

The Rothschilds, Rockerfellers and the other "new" old money people aren't even a pimple on the butt of the Catholic Church as far as land and assets go.


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Well, everyone knows that "generational money" especially propery can be hidden in lots and lots of ways ....  owning land through several layers of proxies is always a good one.

This issue of wealth and power rolls like this:  you got businesses on one end of the spectrum who have to disclose to the shareholders quarterly .....

Richest corporations in the world (measured by revenue and assets)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue



..... and on the other end of the spectrum you have secretive organizations that take great pains to NOT disclose anything.  

Richest entity in the world (measured by assets, land, buildings, etc)
http://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-biggest-landowners-2011-3?op=1

Yup, when you own an entire country you are pretty durn rich.   Queen Elizabeth II and the King of Saudi Arabia top the current list, followed by the Catholic Church in the #3 position.

Note however,  if all of South America still gets counted as really still belonging to the Catholic Church the order is a wee little bit different though ......

Well, if Bill Gates wants his Microsoft to have growth and to expand in the new world order of electronics, he has got to back Nadella whenever Nadella figures out the path he's going to take.

This could be as bad as outright ripping off of Android completely (forking it into Windroid), or ranging up to politely petitioning Google to allow Windows phones to have some simple access the Play Store.

The point is that Microsoft has NO LEVERAGE in the phone world right now and they got no exposed phone world ARMs that they can twist to get some.
(pun intended)

Right now several of their old ex-loyal ex-business partners have had hideous 3rd and 4th quarters last year (several CEOs have had to step down in oriental style shame) and currently several vendors have warehouse stocks of Windows this and that are currently being reburned as Ubuntu or Android units simply so they CAN sell them.

(which then sell fairly quickly, BTW)

Nobody likes Windows 8 nor 8.1 nor 8.1.2 nor RT nor Pro ---- it all still sucks.

The current Windroid scare should promote the FOSS guys to review the open source Apache 2.0 license as far as stopping trollish MS take overs and the declaring of counter standards under other licensing systems.

And since the Windroid attack is all about publishing a counter standard (then enforcing it with a bunch of lawyers) while Android is currently sitting  in a vacuum state where there currently ISN'T a published hardware i/O "bios like" standard at all, then perhaps Android needs to go ahead and publish some unified hardware I/O standards that could then allow Ubuntu and Mozilla to go ahead and write a general purpose ARM OS or two.    

Kill two birds with one stone.   Or Google could go ahead and unify Chrome and Android (which would have hardware standards in it because Chrome has hardware standards).

In other words, move forward into a real ARM OS that can cross the platform lines between tablet, laptop and desktop at a minimum.    

Phones because of screen size and battery power are likely going to need to stay close to Android as it is now as battery power and screen size dictate how much you can really do with them.





Hells Bells, boys -- at least make Microsoft have to WORK HARD if they are a goin' a thiev'in  because they got nothing good going on at home.

I cast thy hense you foul wretched...

A friend from UK told me the royal family is extraordinary wealthy; although, has little influence on very much at all anymore.

Who owns all that real estate in NY & IL?