Biggest Billionaire Blowups: Who Lost The Most In 2008

It was a dreadful year for the world's wealthiest as markets and currencies around the world tumbled.

More than 300 of the 1,125 billionaires we tallied on our annual list last March have since lost at least $1 billion; several dozen lost more than $5 billion. The 10 richest from our 2008 rankings dropped some $150 billion of wealth, dragged down by steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, estranged brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani and property baron K.P. Singh, who together dropped $100 billion. America's 25 biggest billionaire losers of 2008 lost a combined $167 billion.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[4TJefferson]

Oh. Poor baby!

[Truby]

Let us all pitch in a few dollars to help out these poor folks.

[dandypuddin]

I think we already have. They have my retirement account.

[whatsthatsound]

If the world's two wealthiest men, and two wealthiest women, each gave up their fortunes, keeping only a "measly" billion for themselves (keeping them in good stead for ten thousand years), and that money was distributed to the world's neediest, perhaps not a single daughter would ever be sold by desperate parents into a life of servitude. Perhaps every child in the Philippines who spends each day on a trash heap could be sent off to school instead. The relief of misery would be so monumental that perhaps every single human on the planet would feel it somehow.

Four people.

[texastrixie]

Who lost the most in 2008? The regular working people and the poor in this world. And it won't just be a matter of not buying another yacht for us.

[rogerz]

Some people are real as sholes

The fact that you celebrate people loosing their fortunes is just sad.

It's not like they are asking for your sympathy, so why do you have to be such d*cks.

[dandypuddin]

Are they concerned about the people losing their homes and living in their cars? Or worried about those out of work? Bet not. Bet you aren't either.

[rogerz]

Are you helping the people starving in Africa?.

Didn't think so m oron.Nice try.

[Tropiholic]

what on earth do you know about big money rogerz? obviously nothing!

[dandypuddin]

I think he's actually crying. It was his fantasy to be a billionaire someday.

If they gave away much of their fortune, it would not be sad. To paraphrase Andrew Carnegie, "those who die with money left, are just plain sad."

[tomas0808]

I know, let's sell Texas

[cobobs]

Those are meaningless sums of money to me. 1billion, 50 billion: whatever. They are still insanely wealthy.

[Jackalheadedgod]

Whaaaa! Boo hoo! Sniffle sniffle. Bwaaaawaaaa! *&%#@%$*#@!

Cheers,
Jack

[ErnestineBass]

Now there's a group of folks for whom "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" takes on a whooooole new meaning.

heh heh

[Haditup2here]

I thought this was a laissez-faire capitalistic economy. So why should anyone give a d***.

[themodernleader]

The category of billionaires losing the most are caucasians. The orientals are losing the least and will recover most rapidly and will dominate the post-depression world. American billionaires will be all but eliminated from the ranks of the obscenely super rich. And the American economy will recover last and least-----depending on the quality of leadership over a period of time.

[satyriasis]

You're right. American billionaires will suffer the most for funding the RNC and conservative causes. Evidently they lacked the brains to support politicians who could protect them from themselves.

[totalliberal]

Too true. And we make fun of Hillbillies for voting against their own self-interest. Truth is businesses always do better under Democratic governments.

[GravitonX]

The US (and Europe) are about to show the rest of the world what being an economic superpower is about (which will be a much needed awakening for "developing" nations who believe that the system of World Capitalism is anything other than an instrument of Caucasian/white hegemony). When you control the currency against which nearly every country backs their own currency, you essentially dictate terms. As for billionaires, they will come into and out of existence with no more significance that representations of currency concentration.