A crisis is a great time for the richest in the world. When you have a lot of money, it’s a buy, buy, buy atmosphere where you can make even more money from distressed assets or countries like Greece, who are forced by the financial mandarins into a "fire sale" of national assets to get the boots off their necks. Great news! Millionaires are richer today than they were before the financial crisis.

    Here is the upshot in a report from the Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management World Report for 2011. High net worth individuals (HNWIs) are doing just fine:

Globally, HNWIs’ financial wealth grew 9.7% in 2010 to reach US$42.7 trillion, surpassing the 2007 pre-crisis peak. The global population of HNWIs grew 8.3% to 10.9 million. Regionally:

––The population of HNWIs in Asia-Pacific, at 3.3 million individuals, is now the second-largest in the world behind North America, and ahead of Europe for the first time. The combined wealth of Asia-Pacific HNWIs had already topped Europe’s in 2009, and that

gap widened in 2010.

––Europe’s HNWI wealth totaled US$10.2 trillion after growing 7.2% in 2010, while Asia-Pacific HNWI wealth was US$10.8 trillion, up 12.1%.

––North American HNWI wealth hit US$11.6 trillion in 2010, up 9.1%.

––Latin America saw another modest gain (6.2%) in its HNWI population in 2010 and HNWI wealth rose 9.2%. The Latin America HNWI segment has proved relatively resilient and stable in recent years (the number of HNWIs shrank just 0.7% in 2008) and HNWI wealth is now up 18.1% from 2007.

–India’s HNWI population entered the Top 12 for the first time and Australia edged up another notch to No. 9.

Over time, the HNWI population is very gradually becoming more fragmented across the globe, but its geographic distribution in 2010 was much the same overall as it has been, and 53.0% of the world’s HNWIs were still concentrated in the U.S., Japan, and Germany. Ultra-HNWIs posted slightly stronger-than-average gains in their numbers and wealth. The global population of Ultra-HNWIs grew by 10.2% in 2010 andits wealth by 11.5%. As a result, Ultra-HNWIs accounted for 36.1% of global HNWI wealth, up from 35.5%, while representing only 0.9% of the global HNWI population.

[emphasis added]

    Fyi. Ultra-HNWIs are "defined as those having investable assets of US$30 million or more, excluding primary residence, collectibles, consumables, and consumer durables".

    Here at home:

The population of HNWIs in North America rose 8.6% in 2010 to 3.4 million, after rising 16.6% in 2009. Their wealth rose 9.1% to US$11.6 trillion. The U.S. is still home to the single largest HNW segment in the world, with its 3.1 million HNWIs accounting for 28.6% of the global HNWI population.[emphasis added]

    So, let’s see if we can get this straight: while cowardly Democratic governors are going after the pay and pensions of people who make $33,000-a-year, while we have an idiotic debate about the phony deficit and debt crisisthat is focused on cutting services for regular people and laying off hundreds of thousands of hard-working people, while corporate welfare costs us hundreds of billions of dollars, while one in five American cannot find decent paying work but corporations are sitting on one trillion dollars in cashin their treasuries…

    While all that and more is happening and screwing the people, the richest people in the country got richer and the U.S. is home to more than a quarter of the world’s richest people.

     Pass the pitchforks, please.