The Phantom Billionaire Who’s Richer Than Warren Buffett
A practically unheard-of billionaire, Amancio Ortega, just blew past household name Warren Buffett to be the second-richest man in the world, according to Bloomberg. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is worth $85.5 billion, remains first.
Oretega, who has amassed a net worth of $71.5 billion, is the founding chairman of the Inditex fashion group, the world’s largest apparel retailer. Inditex is best known for its chain of Zara clothing and accessories shops, which had sales of $19.7 billion in fiscal 2014.
Related: Bill Gates Is the World’s Richest Man Again. Or Is He?
Worth noting is that Warren Buffett, whose net worth of $70.2 billion puts him at third place, would be in second-place if not for his philanthropic giving.
A native of Spain, Ortega refuses almost all interview requests and until 1999, no photograph of him had ever been published. However, Zara is not so low-profile. The world’s biggest fashion retailer operates over 6,600 stores in more than 88 countries.
Inditex has shown strong growth year over year. In March, it reported net profit up 5 percent from the previous fiscal year. In addition, the company said it planned to open up 480 more stores this year.
Related: America’s Highest Paid CEO Is Not Who You Think
Key to Ortega’s success has been keeping Zara’s manufacturing close to its home base in the ancient port city of La Coruña, rather than outsourcing production to China to cut costs. This allows Zara to act quickly on new trends and put new products into stories right away. Zara shops receive new shipments of clothing twice a week, virtually unheard of among retail stores.
If Inditex brands continue to grow and Zara’s popularity extends to millennials and beyond, the mysterious billionaire’s wealth could eventually push him to number one on the list.
Quote of the Day - October 16, 2017
Speaking at a cabinet meeting on Monday, President Trump said:
"Obamacare is finished, it's dead, it's gone ... There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore."
Click here for the video.
Poll: Trump Tax Cuts Favor the Wealthy; Deficit Should Be Higher Priority
Trump and the GOP still have work to do if they want to convince Americans that their tax plan won’t mostly help the rich. A CBS News Nation Tracker poll released Sunday finds that 58 percent say the tax reforms being discussed favor the wealthy, while 19 percent say it treats everyone equally and 18 percent say it favors the middle class.
The poll also found that 39 percent say that cutting the deficit should be a priority, even if it means taxes stay the same. About half as many people said cutting taxes should be prioritized even if the deficit rises.
The poll, conducted by YouGov, surveyed 2,371 U.S. adults between October 11 and 13. Its margin of error is 2.5 percent.
Coporate Tax Cut Could Be Phased In
House tax writers (at least some of them) are worried that slashing the corporate tax rate found will push the deficit higher in a hurry – an analysis by the Tax Policy Center found that cutting the rate to the stated goal of 20 percent would cost $2 trillion over a decade. One way to soften the fiscal blow would be to phase in the reduction over three to five years. House Republicans say such an approach would reduce the size of the lost revenue by half.
Larry Summers: GOP Tax Claims Are 'Made-Up'
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers isn't happy with the Republican tax plan, and it's not just because he has a different set of ideas as a Democrat. More fundamentally, he says Republicans are making false claims: “When you have -- and I hate to be in a position of using this word about our government -- when you have senior economic officials making claims that are made-up ... it’s very hard to have a dialogue, and compromise, and get to a good place.”
Summers is also worried about the effects of a tax cut for the rich during a time of considerable social turmoil: “There’s a lot of unhappiness and anger out there … It’s really hard to see why focusing a corporate tax cut on those at the very high-end is going to do much to assuage that anger.”
How Much Did Mike Pence’s NFL Walkout Cost Taxpayers?
Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to attend an NFL game between the Indianapolis Colts and San Francisco 49ers yesterday and then leave after some 49ers players kneeled during the national anthem was quickly criticized by some as a planned piece of political theater — and a somewhat expensive one at that. “After all the scandals involving unnecessarily expensive travel by cabinet secretaries, how much taxpayer money was wasted on this stunt?” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) tweeted Sunday afternoon.
The answer, CNN reports, is about $242,500: "According to the Air Force, flying a C-32, the model of plane used for Air Force 2, for one hour costs about $30,000. Pence's flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis Saturday took about three hours and 20 minutes, so it cost about $100,000. Pence then flew from Indianapolis to Los Angeles on Sunday, which took about four hours and 45 minutes, costing about $142,500."
President Trump defended Pence’s trip, tweeting that it had been “long planned.” CNN also reports that some of the costs of Pence's flight from Indianapolis to Los Angeles will be paid back by the Republican National Committee because the vice president is attending a political event there.