45 percent of world's wealth destroyed says Blackstone CEO

"Between 40 and 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed in little less than a year and a half," Schwarzman told an audience at the Japan Society. "This is absolutely unprecedented in our lifetime."

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[Fred]

The definition of wealth is questionable here.

There is an inflation of US dollar based valuation on different mortage back securities, stocks, corporate bonds and default contracts which imploded last year. It took down many major national banks and insurance compaies in the Western countries. The investor just gave back most of the "paper wealth" they think they have in their investment account due to bad information or downright fraud.

Some people define "wealth" as how many year can you live off your "asset" without an "active" stream of income such as salary from working. In a deflationary environment, and from changing of life style, I would say there is no change of wealth at all as people just live more frugally. Again, you can change your expectation to live very happily under negative GDP growth for years such as the post bubble Japan in the 90s.

[Fred]

Here is a WSJ article on the same subject. US erase 18% of "wealth" which is around 11 trillion USD last year.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123687371369308675.html

Blackstone perhaps concentrate on certain assets that drop more than the average household wealth.