World's 8 Richest People Mostly Progressive, Own More $$ than Half the World Population. Yet they rant about Koch 🙄 https://t.co/yFrCDPMOEs— GlobalAwareness101 (@Mononoke__Hime) January 17, 2017
Breitbart News, USA
written by Katherine Rodriguez
Monday January 16, 2017
The world’s eight richest people own as much as half the world’s population, according to an analysis by the charity Oxfam.
Yet the same people who own more than the bottom half of the world’s population are also the same people who tout progressive, globalist philosophies championed by the very people who claim that there is income inequality.
Here are the eight people who made the list:
1. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. Net worth: $75 billion. Gates leads the list with a total net worth of $75 billion, but his foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, spent $170 million to create and implement Common Core standards, and said socialism was the only thing that can save us from climate change.
2. Amancio Ortega Gaona, the Spanish founder of the fashion company Inditex, best known for its oldest and biggest brand, Zara. Net worth: $67 billion. Ortega keeps a low profile compared to most of the people on this list, but his foundation, Fundacion Amancio Ortega, promotes funding for many social programs.
3. Warren E. Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Net worth: $60.8 billion. Buffett may be one of the richest people on this list, but he isn’t against greater regulations for businesses and higher taxes. Yet despite his personal convictions, his business, Berkshire Hathaway, received $95 billion in TARP funds during the banking bailout.
4. Carlos Slim Helú, the Mexican telecommunications magnate. Net worth: $50 billion. In addition to dominating the Mexican telecom industry, he is also the largest investor in the New York Times and is part owner of the historically liberal paper. He is also a fierce proponent of amnesty for illegal aliens in the United States.
5. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Net worth: $45.2 billion. Bezos is owner of the Washington Post, which penned an editorial saying that foreign workers should replace Americans. His company Amazon is also working to cut labor costs by hiring robots to help ship packages.
6. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s creator. Net worth: $44.6 billion. Zuckerberg has been very vocal about his support for progressive, globalist policies, publicly praising Germany’s open-door refugee policies as “inspiring.” He has also reprimanded those at Facebook who crossed out “Black Lives Matter” in favor of “All Lives Matter.”
7. Lawrence J. Ellison, the founder of Oracle. Net worth: $43.6 billion. Ellison, like Zuckerberg, supports comprehensive immigration reform. His company is also one of the biggest users of H1-B visas, which have been criticized for replacing American workers with foreign replacements.
8. Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and founder of the media and financial-data giant Bloomberg L.L.P. Net worth: $40 billion. Bloomberg may be one of the richest men in the world, but he also was the mastermind behind New York City’s ban on large containers of soda and spent $50 million funding the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.
Tom Steyer: Net Worth $1.61 BILLION
Powerline
written by John Hinderaker
April 20, 2014
Billionaire hedge fund operator and “green” energy magnate Tom Steyer has pledged $100 million in the 2014 election cycle to help Democratic candidates who oppose the Keystone pipeline and who favor “green” energy over fossil fuels. Steyer claims to be a man of principle who has no financial interest in the causes he supports, but acts only for the public good. That is a ridiculous claim: Steyer is the ultimate rent-seeker who depends on government connections to produce subsidies and mandates that make his “green” energy investments profitable. He also is, or was until recently, a major investor in Kinder Morgan, which is building a competitor to the Keystone pipeline. Go here, here, here, here, here and here for more information about how Steyer uses his political donations and consequent connections to enhance his already vast fortune.
But Steyer’s hypocrisy goes still deeper. Today, he is a bitter opponent of fossil fuels, especially coal. That fits with his current economic interests: banning coal-fired power plants will boost the value of his solar projects. But it was not always thus. In fact, Steyer owes his fortune in large part to the fact that he has been one of the world’s largest financers of coal projects. Tom Steyer was for coal before he was against it.
A reader with first-hand knowledge of the relevant Asian and Australian markets sent us this detailed report on how Steyer got rich on coal. He titled his report “Hypocrisy & Hedge Funds: Climate Change Warrior Tom Steyer’s Secret Life as Coal Investment Kingpin.” Here it is, in full:
Tom Steyer founded Farallon Capital Management L.L.C. (“Farallon”) in 1986. Farallon has grown to become one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in the United States with over $20bn in funds under management.1 Mr. Steyer’s net worth is reported to be $1.6bn.2.
Mr. Steyer left Farallon in 2012 to focus on political and environmental causes and potentially to position himself for public office. He has been described in the press as the “liberals’ answer to the Koch Brothers”3 due to his wealth and his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and carbon-based energy in general. He has dedicated some $50 million of his personal fortune to back political candidates who support his position on climate change – and punish those who don’t. Mr. Steyer has led recent campaigns with Bill McKibben to encourage university endowments to divest coal equities.
In his recent letter to the Middlebury College and Brown University Boards of Trustees, investment professional Mr. Steyer wrote:
I believe a coal free portfolio is a good investment strategy…4
In a recent interview, Mr. Steyer was quoted referring to “coal-industry baron David Koch”:
[Koch is] taking the most incredible risk that I’ve ever seen someone take, of going down in history as just an evil – just a famously evil – person!5
By their nature, hedge funds are shadowy organizations and Farallon is no exception. Farallon staff do not talk to the press. Their website provides virtually no information and, because it is a private fund, Farallon is not required to report details of its investments.
Essentially all the public knows about Farallon’s investment activities is what the fund is forced to file; for example when their ownership stake in a publicly listed company rises above a disclosable threshold, or when they are compelled to disclose information pursuant to a lawsuit.
While a few bits of information on Farallon’s investments in carbon energy have seeped into the North American press via these disclosures, this information doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. The North American press’s lack of awareness of Mr Steyer’s activities in the coal sector is due to the fact that all of Farallon’s investments in coal have been made outside of North America, and wherever possible through opaque structures which mask their direct involvement.
In order to gain an appreciation of the extent of Farallon’s epic involvement in the coal sector under Mr. Steyer’s tenure one needs to spend time in Jakarta and Sydney, and in the regional financing centers in Hong Kong and Singapore, and speak to professionals (bankers, lawyers, mining consultants and principals) who were directly involved in these Farallon-sponsored coal transactions. With a modicum of effort one discovers that since 2003 Farallon has played the pivotal role in financing the tremendous restructuring and growth in thermal coal production in the region. All of this took place under Mr. Steyer’s tenure as founder and senior partner of Farallon.
Buried in his recent missive to the Middlebury College and Brown University trustees on the evils of investing in coal, Mr. Steyer added this statement:
…I have directed my financial team to divest my holdings of coal investments so that I will have a coal free portfolio…
Perhaps he is being disingenuous and wishes people to believe that some low level employee at Farallon bought a few shares in coal companies without his permission. It is possible that he is trying to inoculate himself against the inevitable perceptions of hypocrisy that he knew would arise when the scale of his involvement in the coal sector came to light, as eventually it must.

The facts, summarized below, might lead one to conclude that:
• Mr. Steyer has had a direct, personal involvement in assembling, through Farallon, a portfolio of strategic investments in overseas coal miners and coal fired power plants which is unprecedented in scale. The total quantum of Farallon’s investments in these transactions is not publicly disclosed, but reasonable estimates suggest that it could be between US$1 and $2 billion in total.6 Taken collectively, the coal producers in which his fund has amassed these investment interests represent one of the largest sources of thermal coal in the world;
• The financing provided by Mr. Steyer’s fund enabled these coal producers to restructure and recapitalize thereby freeing them to grow rapidly during a period of rapidly rising coal prices, leading to one of the largest expansions of thermal coal production in modern times7;
• Made during a period of ever rising coal prices, these investments were almost certainly extremely profitable for Mr. Steyer’s fund overall, and my extension Mr. Steyer personally. It stands to reason that few people in American history have made more money from investment in thermal coal than Mr. Steyer.
Some facts:
• As casual conversation with professionals involved in the regional coal sector will confirm, over the past decade Farallon has become, without question, the pre-eminent financier of coal transactions in Asia and Australia.
• Under Mr. Steyer’s tenure as senior partner, Farallon has been responsible for providing acquisition and expansion funding to about a half dozen of the largest coal mine and coal power plant buyouts in Australia and Asia since 2003. In each case the funding provided by Farallon was pivotal to the success of the transaction.
• Without the leading role played by Farallon many of these transactions, and the subsequent leaps in production (often necessary to repay Farallon’s high interest rate debt facilities), would not have occurred.
• The half dozen Indonesian and Australian coal producers in Farallon’s investment stable produced about 80 mtpa of coal collectively prior to Farallon’s involvement. By 2012 these companies produced 150 mtpa (see table below). In other words, the capital provided by Mr. Steyer’s Farallon group was pivotal in enabling incremental coal production of about 70 million tonnes of thermal coal production per year.
• Looked at another way, the coal mines that Mr. Steyer has funded through Farallon produce an amount of CO2 each year that which is equivalent to about 28% of the amount of CO2 produced in the US each year by coal burned for electricity generation.8
• As above, the companies in which Farallon has made these huge strategic investments produced about 150 mt of coal in 2012. On a combined basis this would make them one of the largest private coal sector companies in the world9 (by comparison the “famously evil” Koch brothers appear to own a grand total of … wait for it ….one coal mine which, at its peak, produced 6 mtpa and is no longer in operation).10
• The quantum of Farallon’s profits on these investments over the past 10 years is not publicly available. Based on the estimated investment quantums6, typical hedge fund returns of 20% and an assumed average holding period of two years per investment, total profit to Farallon from coal investments of $400 million is a reasonable estimate. As the founding and senior partner of Farallon, Mr. Steyer would have received a sizeable share of this profit personally.
Partial History of Farallon’s Overseas Coal & Related Investments:11
This data is based on public information and in a few instances information available from professional sources. All of these investments took place during the period of Mr. Steyer’s tenure as senior partner of Farallon.
2003 – PT Kaltim Prima Coal
The Washington Post
written by Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy
April 15, 2016
The picture dramatically changed in 2010, when the Supreme Court said in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations and unions could spend unlimited sums on politics as long as they did it independently of campaigns and parties. The decision paved the way for super PACs, which are now a norm in federal races.
This year, the groups are attracting supporters who have made fortunes in a variety of industries. Hedge-fund managers and energy tycoons figure prominently among the top 50 donors, as do technology executives and owners of professional sports teams.
The biggest overall contributor to super PACs so far is San Francisco environmentalist and former hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer, who has put $17 million into a super PAC he formed to support candidates committed to combating climate change. He said last month that he plans to spend more than the $70 million he plowed into the group to support Democrats in the 2014 elections.
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