Here:
Norway
Today in Norway the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund ?(SWF) announced that it?has reached the point of investment to where each and every citizen of Norway is, on paper, a millionaire!
A few quick details:
- The fund owns about 1 percent of all stocks traded IN THE WORLD
- Norway is the world’s seventh largest oil exporter
- At one time the SWF owned 81.7 percent of all the shares of Statoil
- Today that percentage is down to 60 percent.
- Statoil is the twenty-sixth largest company in the world.
The SWF currently runs about 180 percent of Norways 2013 GDP and is expected to continue increasing at least until 2030 when projections have the fund hitting 220 percent of GDP.
The Norwegians decided that the land and resources of their country belonged to the people and structured a company based on that. By diversifying that wealth, they own one percent of all stocks in the world, real estate trusts all over the world, government and municipal bonds all over the world, an extensive investment grade art collection, and the list could go on.
Unemployment in Norway is 3.3 percent because the SWF invests in the country to create jobs.
The CEO of Statoil, the mostly state owned oil company and “golden goose” of the Norwegian economy, makes 2.4 million U.S. dollars a year. Which is more than ten times less than the CEO of Chevron (32.2 million U.S. dollars) which adds nothing to the nonexistent sovereign wealth fund of the United States.
Now I assume everyone reading this is an adult and can figure out for themselves the point of this information. But, if not, let me sum it up very quickly: Our national wealth was/has been/ and is being stolen. There is no reason at all why the United States, the worlds largest oil producing country in the world can’t duplicate and even surpass Norway’s achievement. So drop the remote, volunteer, and VOTE!
