In the span of just eight minutes, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell caused a market crash that cut the fortunes of America’s richest people by $78 billion ($112 billion).
Elon Musk saw $5.5 billion wiped from his wealth. Jeff Bezos lost $6.8 billion, more than anyone else on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The fortunes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett fell by $2.2 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively, while Sergey Brin’s fell below $100 billion.
Powell used his speech at the Kansas City Fed’s annual policy forum in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to reiterate that the US central bank will continue to raise interest rates and likely leave them elevated for a while to reduce the inflation.
It was seen as reversing a recent rally in US stocks that was fueled by speculation that policymakers would soon reverse course on their aggressive monetary tightening.
the&The P500 fell 3.4 percent, its worst day since mid-June. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, which counts Microsoft, Amazon.com, Tesla and Alphabet among its biggest constituents, plunged more than 4 percent.
Few multi-million dollar fortunes have been saved this year. The 500 richest people in the world lost $1.4 trillion in the first half of 2022, the steepest drop in six months for the richest people on the planet.
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