No, I'm not talking about accidentally calling United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, "President Clinton." At least he apologised for that and the media made sure everyone knew about that mistake. There's something else he got wrong earlier that week in Vietnam. Something much else. Something that nobody seems to have picked up on. Something that could've been avoided with even the slightest bit of research. By now you're probably screaming for me to hurry up and tell you what he got wrong. Don't worry, I'll get to that in a second. But first, here is something he said at the East Asia Summit in Vietnam last week.
"If you think about the lunch we went to; the richest man in the world was there in the form of the Sultan Brunei, three of the largest most populated countries in the world were there in the form of India and China and the likes, and arguably the only super power that currently exists (the United States)."
Did you read that quote very carefully, especially the part in bold? You should've figured by now that the Sultan of Brunei is not the richest man in the world. In fact the Sultan of Brunei isn't even one of the top 24 richest people in the world. So how could our Prime Minister get something so simple so wrong and not have anyone even notice it? How could he not know that Bill Gates is the richest man in the world?
Or is he?
You'd think so, wouldn't you? If you asked a random person in the street who the richest person is they would most likely reply, "Bill Gates." Actually, even though Bill Gates had been the richest person in the world for most of the time since 1995 (except in 2008 when he was overtaken by Warren Buffett) this is no longer the case. Since March 2010 the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $US 60.6 billion has been Carlos Slim Helu. Heard of him? Me either until I found out from Forbes earlier this year. Carlos Slim is actually a 70 year old Mexican telecom tycoon who owns heaps of companies based on telecommunications and other stuff. He's the Chairman and CEO of Telmex, America Movil and Grupo Carso (all telecom conglomerates) and $6.6 billion richer than Bill Gates, who's now the world's second richest. Find out more about him here .
Now that you've hopefully learned something new and shocking from the The Hamish Report keep reading this blog and make sure you vote in the poll on the right on another rich person, John Key, before 14 November, 11:20pm. Quick! Time's running out!!!
