Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez arrive at an event in Milan, Italy on January 13, 2024. (Photo: Jacopo Raule/Getty Images)
It’s been a rough few years for most people around the world—but not these folks.
Four years ago, the United States entered the Covid-19 pandemic. Forbes published its 34th annual billionaire survey shortly after with data keyed to March 18, 2020. On that day, the United States had 614 billionaires who owned a combined wealth of $2.947 trillion.
Four years later, on March 18, 2024, the country has 737 billionaires with a combined wealth of $5.529 trillion, an 87.6 percent increase of $2.58 trillion, according to Institute for Policy Studies calculations of Forbes Real Time Billionaire Data. (Thank you, Forbes!)
The last four years have been great for particular billionaires:
On March 18, 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had wealth valued just under $25 billion. By May 2022, his wealth had surged to $255 billion. As of March 18, 2024, Musk is at $188.5 billion, more than a seven-fold increase in four years.
Over four years, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has seen his wealth increase from $113 billion to 192.8 billion, even after paying out tens of billions in a divorce settlement and donating tens of billions to charity.
Three Walton family members — Jim, Alice, and Rob — are the principal heirs to the Walmart fortune. They saw their combined assets rise from $161.1 billion to $229.6 billion.
In 2020, only one billionaire — Jeff Bezos — had $100 billion or more. Today, the entire top ten are centi-billionaires, bringing their collective wealth to a staggering $1.4 trillion.
The only billionaire on the 2020 top 15 wealthiest Americans list to see their wealth decline in four years was MacKenzie Scott. Four years ago, on March 18, 2020, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos had a net worth of $36 billion. It has declined to $35.4 billion due to her aggressive giving to charity.
For more details on how America’s billionaires have fared since the onset of the pandemic, check out our updates page.
Scotland’s first minister also said information would often arrive ‘minutes before the meeting’
Humza Yousaf said he was “deeply frustrated” by the Boris Johnson government’s failure to collaborate with the Scottish government during the pandemic.
Scotland’s first minister, who served as both justice secretary and health secretary in the devolved government during the pandemic, told the Covid inquiry information was often arriving “at the absolute last minute before a meeting”.
“Five, ten minutes before the meeting was to start,” he explained. “Or we were reading about an announcement of a decision already been made by the UK government.”
Yousaf also criticised Alister Jack, the UK government’s secretary of state for Scotland.
“When we were on these phone calls [with the UK government], his [Jack’s] engagement was very limited and there would often be meetings where he wouldn’t say anything at all. Perhaps he was there to observe what was said on the meetings as opposed to necessarily contributing,” Yousaf said.
Jack and the Scottish government have had frequent run-ins, most notably around the Scottish government’s decision to reform gender recognition laws. Jack used his role to block the progressive legislation using unprecedented powers.
The UK’s Covid inquiry is currently focusing on how the Scottish government handled the crisis. Jack is due to give evidence next week.
The inquiry was also shown WhatsApp messages exchanged between Yousaf, while health secretary, and senior health adviser Jason Leitch.
The messages show Leitch advising Yousaf to keep a drink in his hands at all times when attending a function, so he didn’t have to wear a mask. Leitch also wrote “literally no one” was following the government advice, which at the time stated that you must wear a mask when not seated at a dinner.
Jamie Dawson, counsel to the inquiry, pushed Yousaf on whether he was being given a “workaround”.
Yousaf responded: “I never asked for a workaround or how not to comply and neither would I suggest that he was giving that.”
The inquiry saw another exchange of messages between Leitch and Yousaf where the pair discussed Nicola Sturgeon’s decision-making process.
Leitch and Yousaf were discussing a rise in cases in Glasgow in May 2021, when Yousaf became health secretary. The pair also discussed a meeting held between Leitch and Sturgeon relating to the rise in cases.
Leitch wrote: “There was some FM [First Minister] keep it small shenanigans as always, she actually wants none of us.”
Yousaf was asked at the inquiry whether Sturgeon frequently took decisions without full cabinet discussion.
“There were times when the former First Minister needed a tighter cast list[…] But I think this was a classic example of [Leitch] perhaps overspeaking,” he said.
Yousaf also apologised for the Scottish government’s failure to preserve WhatsApp messages and made reference to an announcement made earlier today to the Scottish parliament that there will be an external review into the use of mobile messaging apps.
How much did the Government’s failed legal challenge over a Covid Inquiry request come to
The cost of an unsuccessful legal challenge, launched by Rishi Sunak’s Government to stop ministers from having to hand over all WhatsApp messages to the Covid Inquiry, has come to hundreds of thousands of pounds it has been revealed.
Nearly £200,000 was wasted on legal advice to the Government over its failed legal battle at the High Court, a lengthy Freedom of Information Act battle launched by Liberal Democrat spokesperson Ian Rex-Hawkes has exposed.
The Cabinet Office had disputed the inquiry’s demand to provide two years of WhatsApp messages, initiating a legal challenge under the grounds that some messages were personal and “unambiguously irrelevant”.
But its challenge was rejected and the government was forced to concede to the Covid Inquiry requests.
In its response to the FOI request, the Cabinet Office noted that “of November 2023 the total legal costs for the Judicial Review on the production of Government and Ministerial WhatsApp messages to the Inquiry were £192,739.”
However, despite the money spent and legal battle, both Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson have claimed to have lost large chunks of WhatsApp messages during the pandemic period anyway.
Boris Johnson’s top adviser complained that he was having to ‘dodge stilettos’ from UK’s most senior female civil servant
Dominic Cummings called the UK’s most senior female civil servant a “c**t” in a misogynistic WhatsApp message sent to Boris Johnson and Lee Cain in August 2020.
He was referring to deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara, who had commissioned a report into poor behaviour within the Cabinet Office.
The message in full reads: “If I have to come back to Helen’s bullshit with PET [propriety and ethics] designed to waste huge amounts of my time so I can’t spend it on other stuff – I will personally handcuff her and escort her from the building. I don’t care how it is done but that woman must be out of our hair – we cannot keep dealing with this horrific meltdown of the British state while dodging stilettos from that c**t. [sic]”
Cummings was asked by Hugo Keith, counsel to the inquiry, whether he treated “individuals in Downing Street with offence and misogyny”.
“Certainly not,” the former chief adviser to the PM responded.
“Was that aggressive and foulmouthed and misogynistic approach the correct way to manage fellow professionals?” Keith asked.
Alluding to the ongoing chaos regarding changes in the Cabinet Office at the time, Cummings said: “My language about Helen is obviously appalling and actually I got on with Helen at a personal level. But a thousand times worse than my bad language is the underlying issue at stake.”
The inquiry heard yesterday that MacNamara had commissioned a report into the culture at Number 10 in May 2020, which – according to the lead counsel to the inquiry Hugo Keith KC – had painted a picture of “misogyny” and a “macho” culture.
The report, titled ‘How can No.10 and the CO [Cabinet Office] better support the PM in the next phase’, says that “bad behaviours from senior leaders [are] tolerated” and “No.10 [is] always at war with someone”.
The report also singled out misogynistic behaviour including “junior women being talked over or ignored”.
The report paints a chaotic picture of what No.10 was like in the first months of Covid. MacNamara wrote that it was “not clear what we are trying to achieve”, “no one listens to anyone else” and that it was a “superhero bunfight”.
Cummings had touched on this behaviour in his evidence earlier in the day.
Discussing the Cabinet Office, which he described as a “dumpster fire”, he said: “There was a core problem, which is that private secretaries in the PM’s office are generally quite junior officials. Quite a few of them are young women and, at that meeting on 15 May and on other occasions, some of the young women in the private office said to me that they thought there was a serious problem with senior people in the Cabinet Office not paying attention to what they were saying, talking over them – generally just a bad culture of a lot of the senior male leadership in the Cabinet Office, which is something I agree with.”
Cummings also told Johnson in August 2020 his authority was “seriously damaged”. Cummings referred to cabinet ministers as “feral” and “useless fuckpigs”.
In a WhatsApp message on 23 August 2020, Cummings urged Johnson to sack health secretary Matt Hancock and Gavin Williamson.
“I also must stress I think leaving Hancock in post is a big mistake – he is a proven liar who nobody believes or shd [sic] believe on anything, and we face going into the autumn crisis with the cunt in charge of the NHS”, Cummings wrote.
Cummings also said: “Don’t think sustainable for GW [Gavin Williamson, then education secretary] to stay.” Boris Johnson responded saying: “Agree”. Williamson remained in post for over a year after this conversation.
The inquiry also heard yesterday that Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty, the country’s top scientific and medical officials respectively, resisted attempts by top political advisers to “strongarm” them into appearing at the Covid news conference on the same day Cummings was answering questions on the Barnard Castle scandal in the Downing Street garden.
Cummings had been accused of breaking lockdown regulations by driving his family to Durham in March 2020 while his wife had suspected Covid, before taking a family trip to the town of Barnard Castle days later. At the time, all non-essential travel was prohibited and people were allowed to take one short trip outside each day for the purposes of exercise. Cummings claimed at the time that he had been testing his eyesight ahead of the drive home, a suggestion that was widely ridiculed.
Vallance wrote in his diaries: “All highly political and dwarfed by DC [Dominic Cummings]. We tried to get out of it by suggesting that it was not the right day to announce new measures.”
The inquiry continues. openDemocracy is fundraising to pay reporters to cover every day of the public hearings. Please support us by donating here.
The prime minister’s ‘oscillating’ was partly to blame for a 10-day delay in announcing a national lockdown
Boris Johnson’s inability to make decisions “significantly impacted the pace and clarity of decision-making” in the early days of the pandemic, his former communications director told the Covid inquiry today.
Lee Cain, who worked for Johnson in 2020, said the then prime minister “oscillated” over whether to lock down for ten days after a meeting between senior government figures decided it was both essential and inevitable.
Attendees to the meeting, which took place on 14 March 2020, included Cain, Johnson, and Johnson’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings.
In his written evidence to the inquiry, Cain said: “The collective agreement in the room was that a full lockdown was the only strategy which could suppress the spread of Covid-19, save the NHS from collapse and ultimately buy the government more time.”
He continued: “It was only a matter of when, how hard, and how long the lockdown had to be.”
Johnson announced the first national lockdown on 23 March, ten days later. One factor in that delay, suggested Andrew O’Connor KC, counsel to the inquiry, was “indecison on the part of the prime minister”.
Quoting from Cain’s written evidence, O’Connor said: “The system works at its best when there’s clear direction from Number 10 and the prime minister, these moments of indecision significantly impacted the pace and clarity of decision-making across government.”
The inquiry was shown a WhatsApp message sent from Cain to Cummings on 19 March 2020, in which Cain complained he was “exhausted” by the prime minister. Asked by O’Connor why he was felt this way, Cain described Johnson as “challenging”.
Cain said: “Anyone who’s worked with the prime minister for a period of time will become exhausted with him sometimes. He can be quite a challenging character to work with, just because he will oscillate, he will take a decision from the last person in the room.”
O’Connor went on to ask Cain if he felt Johnson was “up to the job” of being prime minister in March 2020.
“It was the wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skillset,” Cain said, adding: “If you look at something like Covid, you need quick decisions and you need people to hold the course, and you know, have that strength of mind to do that over a sustained period of time and not constantly unpick things.”
In an earlier WhatsApp, Cummings had described Johnson as being in “jaws wank mode” in a meeting with Sunak, a reference to Johnson’s frequent statements that he did not want to be compared to the mayor who closed the beaches in the film Jaws.
Cummings added: “I’ve literally said the same thing ten fucking times and he [Johnson] still won’t absorb it”.
The inquiry also saw messages from 3 March 2020, in which Cain told Cummings that Johnson “doesn’t think [the pandemic] is a big deal and he doesn’t think anything can be done and his focus is elsewhere, he thinks it’ll be like swine flu and he thinks his main danger is talking economy into a slump”.
