14 of the world’s 15 richest individuals are Americans.

7 October 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

As-of 6 October 2025, 14 of the world’s richest 15 people are Americans, and, all together, they own $2.844T, which is 94% of the $3.025T that all 15 of the world’s richest own.

This is according to the published figures from Bloomberg, which hide the wealth of the world’s richest individuals. But it does make clear that America is leading the world in the production and/or importation of billionaires. However, neither Bloomberg nor Forbes list the wealth of heads-of-state. At least one of these is the King of Saudi Arabia, who is worth more than $1.6 trillion, which is around four times as rich as the current ‘wealthiest’ person in the world, Elon Musk, owns. According to Saudi Aramco’s latest, 9 June 2024, official public statement, “Other shareholdings, including the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (the “Government”), comprise [own] approximately 97.62% of issued shares.” Those “Other shareholdings” are owned by Saudi-Government-controlled entities; so that the Saudi Government (which is owned by the King) controls the entire 97.62% of Aramco. As-of 6 October 2025, the market capitalization of Aramco was $1.602T, so that he owns $1.564T in Aramco stock. In addition, he owns much of the rest of Saudi Arabia: he is an “absolute monarch,” which means that he has control over everything in his country. On 16 October 2015, I had reported that,

The richest person in the world isn’t anyone in the Forbes list, which excludes calculations for any heads-of-state, but is instead King Salman of Saudi Arabia, whose net worth is in the trillions of dollars. He virtually owns the Saudi Government, which owns the world’s largest oil company, Aramco, among other assets. Aramco alone is worth “anywhere between US$1.25 trillion[7] and US$7 trillion,[8] making it the world’s most valuable company.”

Afterward, there was a public offering of Aramco’s stock on 2 June 2024, and the corporation’s value became publicly known; and, as-of, at least, June 2024, the King controls 97.62% of it. The CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists — blocks from linking to — sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article “Salman of Saudi Arabia” says “He has a reported personal wealth of at least $18 billion” but provides no documentation of that cunning lie, since Aramco’s value is now publicly known, and that man owns 97.62% of it.

Furthermore, the Saudi Government is loaded with U.S. Treasury bonds (from their sales of oil to the U.S. after President Nixon replaced gold by oil as the dollar’s backing), and on 15 April 2016, the New York Times headlined “Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill”, and opened:

Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

Several outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy.

The bill, proposed legislation allowing “the kingdom” [King Saud and his aides especially Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud] to be held liable in US courts for funding the September 11 terrorist attacks, did become law (overriding President Obama’s veto), allowing civil but not criminal suits by 9/11 victim families. Still, it allowed no criminal liability. And, as for even the civil liability, every President so far has prevented that. So, plea deals were proposed as a way to get maybe something. On September 11th of 2025, NPR headlined “Bound by loss, split on justice: 9/11 families reflect 24 years late”, and interviewed members of the suing victim-families. One said:

“When folks ask me, ‘How do you feel about plea agreements? [with prisoners who are being held at Guantanamo],’ well, I can’t give you an honest answer, because nobody in our government is willing to share what the details of them are, and it’s just another example of how our government has treated us year after year.” he said. “The reason these plea deals exist is because Liz’s father and my father were brutally murdered on live TV. You would think that we would be involved in the process. We should have answers to our questions, and no one’s been able to provide those answers.”

As-of today, Saudi Arabia holds only $131.7 billion of U.S. Treasuries. They are now the 18th-biggest holder. As-of December 2015, Saudi Arabia had $119.1B of U.S.Treasuries, and were then the 12th-largest holder. The 6 biggest Treasury holders today are Japan ($1,151.4B), UK ($899.3B), China ($730.7B), Caymans ($438.7B), Belgium ($428.2B), and Luxembourg ($405.0B). Whether the Sauds ever had “up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets” to sell is doubtful. But whether the U.S. Government really cares about the 9/11 victims’ families is not. The answer to that is obvious.

Anyone who doesn’t yet know that the U.S. Government represents only billionaires and trillionaires, not the American people (as is documented at that link) has been deceived. In other words: America’s Government is totally corrupt. (It has been so ever since 25 July 1945, when U.S. President Truman started the Cold War and military-industrial complex, the permanent-war America, aiming for global empire, which has been extremely profitable for billionaires, especially after the Soviet Union ended in 1991; and, so, on 24 February 1990, President GHW Bush made the decision that there must be no “peace dividend” and the warfare-state will continue — which did secretly happen on the American side, though it had ceased on the Russian side.) The U.S. Government is a scamming organization to benefit billionaires at everyone else’s expense, and not only at the expense of the countries that the U.S. Government targets for takeover (adding it to its empire). As-of the latest report, on 30 September 2024, the U.S. Government’s Assets are +$5.662 trillion, and Liabilities are -$45.546 trillion, so that its net worth is -$39.889T, which for each of the 340,000,000 Americans is -$117,320, so that for the average U.S. household of 2.5 people, it is $293,300 owed to this Government’s creditors, who are mainly foreign billionaires, who have sold goods and services to mainly U.S. billionaires (their corporations) (and been paid in dollars, which then buy U.S. Treasury bonds), thus producing this debt, which consequently became the U.S. Government’s foreign liabilities that are owed by the U.S. Treasury Department. As-of November 2023, “the middle, median U.S. household wealth is $162,350”. So: the typical American household (or family) has a net worth of $162,350, but owes to the U.S. Government’s creditors $293,300. That’s a net net worth of -$130,950. And that’s the reality, in this nation that has 14 of the 15 allegedly richest people in the world.

Anyway, America’s net worth is declining (as the Government’s net worth becomes increasingly negative while the typical American increasingly owes more than he/she owns), at the same time that its stock markets are reaching record highs; and this increasing wealth-inequality means that while America’s billionaires are so rich so that they now constitute 14 of the 15 publicly known world’s richest, America’s poorer 90% are consequently becoming poorer instead of richer. And it’s that poorer 90% of Americans who will be left holding the bag of debt to pay when the U.S. economy’s Ponzi scheme ultimately collapses entirely. It truly is “socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor”: fascism. On 4 October 2025, I documented that “U.S. discretionary income has been declining since 2011.” This means that, even more than before, “only America’s richest (the people who have loads of discretionary income to gamble in the stock markets), have been substantially rising, and of America’s super-richest (who predominantly have been buying stocks in America’s ‘defense’ contractors, the profiteers from wars) have been soaring.” Not only is this phenomenon continuing; it is increasing. And the profiteers from wars are the investors in the by-far-fastest-rising sector of the U.S. stock markets — the contractors to the U.S. Government, U.S. armaments-makers, the mega-corporations whose market is the U.S. Government and the Governments that it controls. These companies sell to U.S. taxpayers, who, each year, pay hundreds of billions of dollars for their weapons. Each and every year they pay to these extremely profitable corporations more than the Russian Government spends on its entire military budget — which INCLUDES all of Russia’s armaments. America’s Government is far more corrupt than those of the main nations it aims to take over, such as Russia and China.

President Trump and the members of Congress care far more about those 14 U.S. mega-billionaires than about the 340 million other Americans. This nation is an aristocracy, not a democracy. You can’t say this in any mainstream U.S.-empire (U.S. and its colonies) ‘news’-medium. The U.S. Government’s international ‘legitimacy’ is based upon the proven lie that this country is a democracy instead of a dictatorship (by its super-rich). That’s now just a liberal figleaf covering for U.S.-style fascism. As Warren Buffett (nominally the world’s 10th-richest person) said in 2006, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” And that is even more the case now than it was when he said it 19 years ago.

Few of the commentators who have called attention to these problems have recommended solutions to any of them, but they all are really ONE problem; and the proposed partial solutions have therefore been doomed to fail. On September 23d, I proposed the only comprehensive and systematic solution, one that would stand a reasonable chance of establishing an enduring democracy; but, thus far, no one has been interested in it.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.