The Mess

The more interesting part on this list (we could resonnably expect to grow at a fast pace) was the so call brothers Anil and Mukesh Ambani of India's private conglomerate Reliance whose losts totalled $60.7 billions ($32.5 and $28.2 billions, respectively), not taking into account other sound names like Lakshmi Mittal, Tata, and many others, savvy indian, chinese, brazilian, mexican and counting eastern european, ukrainian, russian and CIS countries billionaires that have surged in the world business stage these recent years.

Consider just that there are no easy ways properly speaking today, either for insiders, analysts and medias reporters, to make a serious and compelling survey on a global scale, that would let us figure out the magnitude of the troubles we're in.

Recently, a CBS broadcast about losses and writedowns in the US mortgage markets (and probably in others, specially in UK) forecasted about 3 $ trillions hit for 2009 that would jump to unprecedented amounts by 2010-2011 (a nightmare for newly elected and enduring US President), highlighting that this were not taking into account the commercial real estate losses to come. The sad thing to acknowledge, is that such pratices were not simply occuring in western countries, and should have been extensively common in emerging markets thank to the 'free markets' triumph. 

By simply trying to figure out a vague idea of how could be large the spectrum of such 'delicacies' in the celebrated emerging countries worldwide,it could turn out to a really true nightmare, when the experts are pointing out how these sophisticated 'wealth products' have been packaged, bunddled and sold out worldwide.

So What?

My feeling is that a legitimate question, if any,  should have been for the author Mr. Trey Thoelcke, in this article you can find (http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/12/24/money-losers-of-2008-billionaires-who-lost-billions-this-year/), if the taxpayer as the ultimate funding source in the chain, should and would have to bail them out, let's say for the sake of the global economy recovery.

After all, and following the common sense in this highly sophisticated ground that 'global business', these are the guys without , nothing could go right, despite politicians gesticulations.

The recent 'Madoff Ponzi scheme' is at some regards facinating on how the whole system had gone mad, alongside all the efforts that have been made to make the markets regulatory rules more efficients.

The terrible effect of this scam is that it only shows what have been discovered yet and could lead to guess that there are probably some others in the pipes as suggested an Harvard professor in a CBS interview. If over the times, mortgage packages have become immensely popular with investors, mortgage - backed securities could reveal not far than earlier in 2009, that President-elect Obama will have to devote himself, all with G.20 leaders to quickly set up a global regulatory framework that could be applied no later than his firsts 6 months. Daunting challenge!  

Misconceptions

For sure, these losses are about the underlined value of their (professional) assets as an estimate of their wealth.

But, these guys have been depicted by all standards as those ones who have recently built a significant part of the world's wealth and made the markets work the most of their best these last years.

I have yet already quoted what in the wake of Senator Obama's historical victory in the late US presidential elections, had been a significant post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/no-currency-left-to-buy-t_b_140250.html) committed by one of the most unprobable author, John Cusack.

But the more things are going badly their way, the more I find this piece of text insightful. Cusack said also "... All that's left is derivative debts -- bets between liars and lies. Trillions of dollars. Turned capitalism into a Ponzi scheme for trading worthless paper. No real value anywhere. No matter how much money Ben Bernanke prints.
... Mathematical realism. Eat what you kill. The bottom line. Greed is good. Graphs and flow charts and metrics for success...Collapse, chaos, lawlessness. And even the market voted with its feet. The era of market idolatry is over. This is the end of Milton Friedman, Reaganomics and supply-side theory. This ideology has never been about free markets but a fundamentalist vision that is a cover for naked aggression and a social contract based on fear and greed". Quite frightening, right?

In a weekly GPS broadcast discussion with editor and columnist Fareed Zakaria, George SOROS had stated what he considers as a mistake in the US government $ 700 billions bailout program: the treasury secretary's reluctance to DILUTE THE SHAREHOLDERS, what he thinks, was the real thing to do. Aouch, did you say "dilute the shareholders"? He also pointed out the misconceptions of what he named 'market fundamentalism' that have dominated since the 'Reagan-Tatcher' era.

We have all, collectively, celebrated the shareholders alongside their 'legitimate' gains, and it should be hard, if not irrelevant or inefficient to reverse course right away, in a desperate attempt to avoid or try to solve the mess around. The most probable scenario to gauge and handle what is announced to be possibly devastating, as for now, the credit defaults swaps' $ 60 trillions markets  volume has not hit yet, should be certainly to join forces all regulatory bodies around the globe and key political leaders to define a timeline for a radical set of actions 'as TOP PRIORITIES' for the fisrt quater 2009.