Super Rich

The economy could be teetering on the edge of a double-dip recession, and theme parks are still tossing discounts at reluctant travelers. But there are encouraging signs from at least one small segment of consumers: the super-rich. New data compiled by American Express Business Insights, a unit of credit card giant American Express Co., suggests that what the company calls "ultra-affluent" consumers are beginning to open their wallets wider when inside theme parks — much more so than everyone else.

NEW YORK - The painting once hung in the Cleveland Museum of Art. And there was no shortage of people who wanted it in the crowded Christie's auction room. The artwork, "Women Reaching for the Moon," is a blur of a woman in a red dress. It was painted by Rufino Tamayo, the famed Mexican creator of abstract works that combine European and Latino influ- ences. Though bidding started at $500,000, it quickly reached $1 million. The standing-room-only crowd murmured as auctioneer Adrian Meyer parried with the remaining bidders, and workers wheeled in rows of extra chairs.

The economy is improving for the super rich. After two years of declines, the total net worth of America's richest people rose 10% to $955 billion this year from 2002, according to Forbes magazine's annual ranking of the nation's 400 wealthiest individuals. Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, who remained in the top spot, personified the trend toward increasing wealth. His fortune increased $3 billion to $46 billion this year.

Never let a crisis go to waste, says an old rule of politics. For some major players in the economy, the financial crisis that began five years ago this month with Lehman Bros.' collapse turned out to be as much an opportunity as a calamity. Although the memories that the anniversary evoke are overwhelmingly grim - cascading home foreclosures, bank failures, massive layoffs, diving stock prices - five years later some spectacular winners have emerged from the maelstrom, along with a more familiar list of pitiable losers.

In the end, it always comes down to money. But before we go down that route, take a glimpse back to Friday night and a game played in a locale where the dollars are piled higher than in most places on the planet -- the Stade Louis II in the casino-fueled principality of Monaco. Up in the stands, Michel Platini, the French president of UEFA, was hobnobbing with royalty, in this case Monaco's Prince Albert II, who had wandered down from his palace just to the north of the stadium.

With regard to Robert Scheer's July 1 Column Left on the hypocrisy of American policy vis-a-vis Vietnam and China: What else would you expect from a government that destroys the safety net for the poor and hands the super-rich the biggest welfare package in 16 years? Washington is hypocritical. JOAN MEIJER-HIRSCHLAND Los Angeles

George Skelton says we should celebrate that Prop. 208 has prevented politicians from fund-raising for five months (Capitol Journal, May 28), so why do I feel like crying? As he points out, politicians will now start raising money from fat cats again. Instead of $500 contributions, the limits will be $1,000! In fact, Skelton forgot to mention the loophole that he has reported on previously which allows the super-rich to channel $5,000 contributions through the political parties to candidates.

Thanks for the fascinating cover story on billionaire David Geffen. As someone just arrived from Wichita, I found that my own dream of making it big in show biz was enhanced by your profile. Geffen started at the bottom and ended up in the catbird seat of Hollywood. And now that he's super-rich he's giving it back to us by getting involved in politics. He's the Ross Perot of Hollywood! JERRY CARNER Los Angeles

'The super-rich shouldn't benefit at the expense of the airline-flying public. Charging user fees to the private jet-set is the equitable thing to do.' -- Ian Nicholson, Thousand Oaks, on a June 24 story about a report suggesting that passengers on commercial airline flights help to subsidize private jet owners, who benefit from a disproportionate share of federal funds for airport improvements without paying their fair share of the...

Should we balance the budget by slashing Medicare and programs benefiting the working poor, children and safeguarding the environment? Must we decimate programs for school lunches and training programs? Big corporations are not being asked to give up their "corporate welfare," i.e., grazing, mining and timber companies and developers to mention just a few. Our system of democracy is being trampled by the super-rich enjoying every luxury of special treatment. Greed and self-interest by the wealthy are using our tax dollars to further their own gain.

The good news for the U.S. economy as we enter 2013 is that the election's over. The bad news is that the election's over. What's good about it is that both parties in Washington can shed their preoccupation with the campaign theatrics that dominated our long national voyage from pre-primary jockeying through election day. Yet the most dispiriting thing about the campaign's end is that the economic challenges facing the majority of Americans remain...

Of all the challenges individual investors face, one of the toughest is finding a good financial planner. As a generation of do-it-yourself investors grows older and their financial lives get more complex, many people are realizing they want a human touch. Though they're comfortable researching investments on the Internet, they want some level of guidance from a planner. "People say, 'Look, I know what I'm doing but I just had a kid' or 'I've gotten a bonus at work and money is now more important to me. It's more serious,'" said Jon Stein, founder of investment website Betterment.com.

"Cosmopolis," starring Robert Pattinson as a super rich supernova, is an exceedingly self-conscious adaptation of the brooding indictment of the 1% found in Don DeLillo's novel of the same name. The attempt is earnest, but the material itself resists easy transition because virtually all of the action takes place inside a tricked-out limo and a trickier mind. It is a disappointment coming from writer-director David Cronenberg, who has proved such a master at mind games. Cronenberg is perhaps too faithful to the book.

When it comes to big money in politics, Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons' influence has long been apparent in Texas, where he has plowed more than $1 million into Rick Perry's gubernatorial campaigns. Now Simmons has found a new outlet for his outsize political giving — the explosion this election cycle of "super PACs," independent political organizations that can accept massive contributions to influence the presidential race and other federal elections. Simmons and his privately held holding company, Contran Corp., dumped $8.6 million into a series of GOP-allied super PACs last year, according to campaign finance records released late Tuesday night.

  Israel's hottest new TV show may be making many viewers feel guilty. But they can't stop watching it. It's a "Real Housewives" reality-based knockoff about six rich, materialistic women bouncing from personal training sessions in their mansions to Botox appointments to champagne-fueled shopping binges, dishing dirt about one another and generally reveling in their own fabulousness. Hardly scandalous stuff to American TV viewers. But in the land of the kibbutz - a nation founded on egalitarian ideals, where lawmakers still wear jeans in the Knesset, or parliament, and the flaunting of wealth was once considered taboo - this unapologetic celebration of the lifestyles of the rich and Israeli is hitting a raw nerve.

President Obama is right to insist on the "Buffett rule": Millionaires should not be paying income tax at a rate lower than their secretaries'. But correcting this inequity is only a small step toward fairness. The more serious inequality problem facing the United States involves overall wealth, not just income. While the top 1% of Americans earned 21% of the nation's income, they owned a staggering 35% of the wealth in 2006-07, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

"L.A. County Jobs Surge Since '93, but Not Wages" (July 26) blows the smoke screen on the "booming economy." While corporate America with its multimillionaire CEOs reaps huge profits, very little has trickled to the average working person. As the high-paying jobs have left to offshore companies, American workers have been marginalized. Altering time cards by supervisors is all too common, as well as reclassifying once full-time employees as temps, part-time or "independent contractors."

Come on now! You mean to say that those individuals who can afford to pay more than $100,000 for a boat and more than $250,000 for a plane balk at paying a 10% luxury tax on anything above those prices? If we peasants in California, and in most other states, uncomplainingly pay an 8.25% sales tax on necessities such as toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, etc., not to mention certain foods, why should the super-rich whine about a special tax on their super-luxurious playthings? I'm sure some way can be found to write it off as a business expense.

The economy could be teetering on the edge of a double-dip recession, and theme parks are still tossing discounts at reluctant travelers. But there are encouraging signs from at least one small segment of consumers: the super-rich. New data compiled by American Express Business Insights, a unit of credit card giant American Express Co., suggests that what the company calls "ultra-affluent" consumers are beginning to open their wallets wider when inside theme parks — much more so than everyone else.

The bargain hunters jockey gingerly for a spot to park their luxury sedans and SUVs along Brewster Drive, a winding road in the hills of Tarzana. It's a woodsy neighborhood of large homes behind wrought-iron gates, and more than two dozen shoppers are here to bid for a piece of it. Housing auctions are plentiful these days, including builders' closeouts that lure hundreds of bidders to hotel ballrooms and public sales of foreclosures on...