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Comment by orangepurple | Hacker News Reader

The wealthiest and most secretive are probably the members of the Rothschild family.

   Today, the family's total net worth is estimated at an eye-watering $400 billion, with some estimates ranging to an astonishing $1 trillion.

Ref: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/the-richest-...

Archive: https://archive.is/pMypx

Anders Aslund, a Swedish economist and author, estimated this year that Putin has somewhere between $100 billion and $130 billion in assets—a calculation based on the wealth of Putin’s oligarch confidants, which could be between $500 million and $2 billion each.

Ref: https://time.com/6151695/vladimir-putin-wealth-assets-freeze...

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It's very funny to see Rothschild described as "secretive"; I thought they were one of the most well-known families in the world or at least in Europe.

How many of them an average person can name? And how many of those are still alive?

Name is known, but I don't think they are as individuals known very much at all.

There are multiple Rothschilds on the Forbes and Bloomberg billionaire lists. The family name is attached to many endowments, scholarships, museums, think tanks, hospitals, etc.

Virtually everyone who cares to look knows they're wealthy, but some conspiracy theorists prefer to act like they're a secretive cabal controlling the world, lol

Almost by definition billionaies are the cabal if nothing else due to their purchasing power.

The ones in the four comma club rule entire nations and fund wars and stay wealthy by obtaining ownership rights of conquered territories for a relatively low cost.

I don't know any of their first names but I also can't name the first names of any other well known wealthy families (off the top of my head walton, koch (I just know they are "Brothers"), dupont, bush)... I don't need to know the first names to know the families are billionaires

That reads like something out of a tabloid in the checkout aisle of a grocery store.

It links to a website called “celebritynetworth”, which just based on the URL, has no credibility.

It seems like you stopped after the first paragraph.

Why should I? It even claims the richest family member is worth $10B, which is nowhere near the top of the list these days. It says $1T in the headline, how big is this family?

More likely is that this is a garbage clickbait article with no credible source.

> which just based on the URL, has no credibility.

It seems like you're proudly flaunting your own ignorance? The site has been around for more than a decade. What about a web site such as "Hacker News"? Sounds like I might get a virus if I visit that page!

What does the length of time the site is around have to do anything? The subject of the website, unverifiable information that they certainly do not have access to, is what makes it uncredible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CelebrityNetWorth

If it was a .gov URL where the government is using tax returns and property data to estimate net worth, then it might be credible.

Discrediting a website just because of the name is not a valid argument against the content. Even though most hackers worship the government as a god, I can assure you that tax returns or property data won't even be close to accurate for getting the net worth of billionaires. They have funds and shell companies where the US government can't touch them.

The nature of this information is that it will always be unverifiable, but unless you have any sustainable criticism against the numbers on that website, you shouldn't disregard it completely.

> Even though most hackers worship the government as a god, I can assure you that tax returns or property data won't even be close to accurate for getting the net worth of billionaires.

I know, that is why I wrote “might” be credible, but most celebrities are not at that level, so tax returns and property ownership information might work.

> The nature of this information is that it will always be unverifiable,

>you shouldn't disregard it completely.

How you are squaring the above 2 thoughts is beyond me. I am going to continue disregarding it completely, because as you wrote, it is unverifiable, therefore the website is pulling the numbers out of their ass.

> How you are squaring the above 2 thoughts is beyond me.

A late reply so might not be seen, but that is what we as humans have to do every day. If you're in highly competitive business or if you're investing, it is just a fact that information you get will be unverifiable. You just have to act on the information you have, to your best judgement. It's even worse in politics and in war, where you have to expect active disinformation from every angle.

Well, can't be the most secretive given how everyone knows that they are "secretive". I'd ascribe them more to being private.

The secretive are the ones that we don't even know exist (i.e. a google search would give very little), let alone that they are billionaires.

Super interesting and not very well known history. Here’s a decently well done YouTube documentary about the family: https://youtu.be/IbWl40xgw0A

Dictators don't have wealth, they only have power. As soon as dictator dies all this "wealth" will disappear in a moment in thousands of hands.

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