So for a punishment we're giving you $20 billion in bonuses.
(...) The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported securities-industry employees averaged $400,000 a year in salary alone last year.

Not quite three trillion dollars in hedge funds, or $2.848.000.000.000? So claims Investors Offshore. Although such a sum may sound enormous and indeed amounts to more than twenty percent of the entire GDP of the European Union, it is modest compared to the real private money that is out there. Merrill-Lynch and Cap Gemini have recently published their twelfth annual World Wealth Report , a trustworthy source given that Merrill-Lynch wants to manage as much wealth as possible and therefore has an interest in getting the figures right. Their Report for 2008 counts a shade over ten million "High Net Worth Individuals" in the world-about one in every 670 people. These HNWIs, including the far richer and more exclusive group of "Ultra-HNWIs", in 2007 together controlled $40.7 trillion, that is, $40.700.000.000.000.
(...) The main WIDER findings were not surprising for those who have studied the subject: In the year 2000, 2 percent of adults in the world owned more than half of global household wealth. The richest 1 percent alone accounted for the ownership of 40 percent of global assets while the top 5 percent captured 71 percent and the top 10 percent held 85 percent of the wealth. The bottom half of humanity got along on barely 1 percent of total assets. These figures show the operation of the power law in high gear, especially since the WIDER definition of "wealth" was broader than that of Merrill-Lynch. The WIDER scholars used the classic "net worth" definition, meaning all physical and financial assets, including homes, the principle asset for most people who own anything, less debts.

This 4000 MW of AC load simply vanished from the system demand after the mercury dropped by 7-8C on late September 5. The system remained so till September 08 where-after it has slowly built up at a rate of 800-900 MW a day. Energy labelling is unheard of and Pakistan remains a dumping ground for gas guzzling and inefficient electrical equipment. The present requirement of cooling is being managed by double the required load viz. only 2000 MW. As such, besides being unduly loaded by a non-productive AC load of 4000 MW, the power system has also to arrange for expensive peaking generation without much returns. Pakistan cannot afford such extravagant usage of ACs and that all such usages have to necessarily result in great increase in utility revenues. We must use ACs most frugally, and these have to be energy labelled with only efficient models allowed to be imported and manufactured locally.

the concentration of wealth in the world:
According to the study, for the world as a whole the share of the top 10 per cent was 85 per cent in the year 2000 and the Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality between 0 and 1) equalled 0.892 at official exchange rates. This is an extraordinarily high value of the Gini coefficient and indicates extremely high concentration of wealth. For comparison, it can be noted that a recent study by Branko Milanovic found the Gini coefficient of world income to be 0.795 in 1998.
(...) As expected, the US is found to be the richest country even in personal wealth terms. The average wealth per person in the US is estimated to have been $144,000 in 2000. This compares with around $6,500 per person (in purchasing power parity or PPP terms) in India, which is at the bottom of the list of countries with wealth data. However, this does not mean that this is actually the lowest per capita wealth of all countries. The data used in the study are not comprehensive, and so a number of poor countries have been excluded for want of adequate data. So the actual wealth inequality across countries is likely to be even higher.
(...) The study also finds that the concentration of wealth within countries is high. Typical Gini coefficients for wealth distribution within countries lie in the range of about 0.65 - 0.75, and there are several above 0.8. In contrast, the mid-range for the Gini coefficients for income distribution is from about 0.35 – 0.45. So the concentration of wealth has become more acute than the concentration of income.
(...) In 2000, the richest 1 per cent of adults alone owned 40 per cent of global assets, and the richest 10 per cent of adults accounted for 85 per cent of total world assets. In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1 per cent of global wealth.