Billionaires Worth More Than the United States’ Cash Balance
The cash balance at the Treasury Department is now lower than the net worth of some of the world’s richest people.The Treasury Department said its cash balance fell to $38.8 billion as of Thursday, as the United States inched toward running out of cash to pay its bills.That was significantly lower than the $316 billion the department had in operating cash, which is held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the start of the month.Just how empty is the Treasury cash coffer? For comparison, $38.8 billion is on par with the gross domestic product of Bahrain and Paraguay and lower than the net worth of more than two dozen of the wealthiest people in the world. Of course, much of the assets of those billionaires are tied up in stocks, rather than liquid assets.Here is a list of people with higher net worths than the U.S. cash reserves, according to Bloomberg News’s Billionaire Index as of Thursday. (Under the news agency’s editorial policy, its billionaire owner, Michael Bloomberg, is not considered for the index. Forbes, though, estimates his net worth at $94.5 billion.)Bernard Arnault, chief executive of the luxury group LVMH: $189 billionElon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter: $179 billionJeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon: $139 billionBill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft: $125 billionLarry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle: $116 billionSteve Ballmer, investor and former chief executive of Microsoft: $113 billionLarry Page, co-founder of Google: $112 billionWarren Buffett, investor: $111 billionSergey Brin, co-founder of Google: $106 billionMark Zuckerberg, co-founder and chief executive of Facebook: $92.3 billionCarlos Slim, investor: $90.3 billionFrançoise Bettencourt Meyers, heir to the L’Oréal fortune and company board member: $87.2 billionMukesh Ambani, chairman of the energy group Reliance Industries: $83.7 billionAmancio Ortega, founder of the Inditex fashion group: $67.1 billionJim Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune: $66.6 billionRob Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune: $64.9 billionAlice Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune: $63.8 billionGautam Adani, founder and chairman of the Adani Group conglomerate: $63.4 billionJacqueline Mars, heir to and co-owner of the candy maker Mars: $61.7 billionJohn Mars, heir to and chairman of Mars: $61.7 billionZhong Shanshan, founder and chairman of the bottled-water company Nongfu Spring: $61.6 billionJulia Flesher Koch and family, heirs of the businessman David Koch: $60.6 billionCharles Koch, chief executive of the industrial conglomerate Koch Industries: $60.4 billionMichael Dell, chief executive and chairman of Dell Technologies: $53.4 billionAlain Wertheimer, co-owner and chairman of Chanel: $45.9 billionGérard Wertheimer, co-owner of Chanel: $45.9 billionGiovanni Ferrero, executive chairman of the chocolate and confectionery company Ferrero Group, and family: $43.6 billionZhang Yiming, founder and chief executive of the technology company ByteDance: $42.3 billionPhil Knight, co-founder of Nike, and family: $41.5 billionKlaus-Michael Kühne, honorary chairman and majority owner of the transport company Kuehne+Nagel: $40.9 billionFrançois Pinault, founder of the luxury group Kering: $39.6 billion More
