Rothschild wealth – How rich are the Rothschilds really?

[This is from Lorenz Kraus who says that the numbers I published can't possibly be true. So this is his assessment. I have however asked him some questions because I have been quite certain that the wealthy can hide money in many ways. So I'm trying to find out more. Maybe I'm wrong. Jan]

Hi Jan,

Realistically, the only way to estimate the Rothschild wealth is:

1. Take a sum of the market cap of the top 100 banks: $6 trillion.

2. What portion of those stocks is owned by the Rothschild’s? This would be public information in some way. Let’s just guess and say 10% = $600 B.

That’s why below 100 trillion.

1. Real-estate. It is possible to conceal huge real-estate holdings.

The Catholic Church real estate holdings are 177 million acres of land. If we multiply that by $50,000 USD per acre that is $8 trillion.

That’s also less than 10% of the 100 trillion figure.

Could the Rothschild’s conceal land holdings larger than the Catholic Church?

Doubtful.

It would be incredibly tedious and expensive to hide all this wealth.

Even if you grant that the Rothschilds could hide wealth in stocks and real-estate, the asset value would not be significantly beyond the most well-known billionaires and real-estate owners. Further, any liquidation of that wealth would destroy the asset value.

Their assets would not exceed that of the Queen and her Golden Shares whatever value that is.

In short, Rothschild wealth is probably closer to $10 billion than 100 billion, or 100 trillion.

The Saudi royal family is only worth $100 billion

You can also compare it to families like the Waltons ($250 billion).

That leaves stores of gold stashed away. Even if it were equal to the value of Church real estate that only brings it to $8 trillion.

Finally, there are government bonds across the world. Bonds are net losers over the long run even with interest payments. Let’s say they have $8 trillion in bonds.

Total asset value = $24 trillion.

That’s less than 25% of the outrageous figure of $100 trillion.

It is impossible for a rich family to retain so much asset value over the long run.

The only way to retain wealth over the long run is titles to assets, but those assets, like real-estate, would require regular taxes to retain.

I don’t see the Rothschild’s being able to manage money, successfully, or retain their holdings much beyond the norm, over the long-run. Wealth decays.

Also, their ambition to build wealth would decrease generation by generation.

Given all that, I would bet $10,000 for a $1 million return that their holdings are less than $10 billion.

-Lorenz