re Slorc Press Cronies & Asia $$$

[cd@xxxxxxxxxx]

For those of  you Burmese Freedom fighters and infobuffs, here is some 
dope  on your favorite Slorc-son and staunchly immoral capitalist, 
Michael Dobbs-Higginson, grace de The Trillionaire Club: 
http://www.asia-inc.com/archive/tril.html
The Trillinaire Club, re Asian Billionaires, and what Slorc is about, 
ergo the First Burmese Billionaire is Yet to Come, or , Who are they? 
Hope it helps clear the murky bottom of the bottom line. Any comments? 
Dawn Star, Paris 

 .....Certainly electronic banking technology allied with the secrecy 
provided by
the increasing number of tax havens has severely weakened governments'
ability to tax wealth. 

But Michael Dobbs-Higginson, former head of Merrill
Lynch Asia in Hong Kong and now a consultant to Bank Indosuez, is
skeptical about how easily billionaires can avoid taxes.

 "It's incredibly simplistic to suggest you can keep all your money in a 
no-tax
jurisdiction," Dobbs-Higginson says. "Governments have lost control of 
what
I call liquid assets, but they have not lost control of fixed assets."

The specter of the offshore trillionaire -and the power such wealth will
buy -has immense ramifications for society and governments. Many 
embryonic
trillionaires are rightly revered as captains of industry and commerce.
Many donate large portions of their wealth to philanthropic causes.

But power-crazed tycoons who pull the strings of government and even 
create
states within states no longer exist just in the pages of popular 
fiction.
The drug warlords of Asia's Golden Triangle, notably Khun Sa, have lived
for decades a mid the trappings of lavish wealth in personal fiefdoms
protected by private armies. In war-ravaged Bosnia, the wealthy 
businessman
Fikret Abdic managed to briefly carve out his own mini-state amid the
turmoil.

Hong Kong investment guru Marc Faber acknowledges the emergence of what 
he
terms a "different social structure." Says Faber: "Corporations are
frequently more powerful than countries. Indeed, these days, so are some
individuals." That do esn't bother Faber. "We live in a capitalistic 
age,"
he says. "It is not a negative concept that someone's wealth is greater
than the GDP of some countries."

Inflation also could have a major effect on how quickly the world 
produces
its first trillionaire. Faber, sometimes seen as a prophet of doom,
estimates the current rate of return on investment runs at 2 percent 
above
inflation. "In the present environment, people will be very fortunate to
get a compounded 8 percent per annum," he says. "But if inflation goes to
20 percent, interest rates will be around 22 to 23 percent. Then there's
more likely to be a trillionaire." He notes dryly that Brazil and pre-war
Germany already produced trillionaires of sorts as a result of
hyper-inflation.

Modest inflation, however, can help create trillionaires without eroding
the value of their money too much. Says Jacob Rees-Mogg: "Even with just 
5
percent annual inflation you're a good part of the way to the 20 percent
return you would need." In Hong Kong, inflation has been running between 
7
percent and 10 percent annually.

Some Asian-based billionaires have benefited greatly from recent currency
fluctuations. The Brunei dollar, for instance, is pegged to the Singapore
dollar, which has soared in value against the U.S. dollar. And 
appreciation
of the yen ha s greatly increased the U.S.-dollar worth of Japan's bevy 
of
billionaires this year.

Two major obstacles loom ahead of would-be Asian trillionaires: the 
ability
of the next generation to pick up the billionaire baton and run with it;
and possible political turmoil, most obviously in China.

"Rags to rags in three generations," is one common description of the 
rise
and fall of family-business dynasties. In Hong Kong, much of the great
wealth is still in the hands of the first-generation, rags-to-riches
tycoons, such as Li Ka Shing. The next generation is still largely
untested, despite all those prestigious business degrees earned at 
Western
universities.

Dobbs-Higginson: "If you look at the history of great
family wealth, very few families have kept their wealth. It's usually
wasted by the third generation."

Wasted? Or keenly distributed among the family kin and their interestes? 
Amen. DS