The new robber barons
The billionaires of today resemble the profiteers of a century ago who ruled their fiefdoms like feudal lords, argues David Ransom.

Croesus and the crackpots
Trevor Turner diagnoses the sickness of the super-rich and prescribes a rude cure.

Roubles without rules
The new-rich in Russia are shopping like it's the last day of their lives. Sometimes, reports Olivia Ward, it can prove to be just that.

GLOBALOPOLY...
Cartoon by P J POLYP

The pirate privateers
Privatization has been sweeping away public services and leaving a democratic deficit says Dani Sandberg.

The art of wasting money
It's not so easy to spend a fortune. Martin Fagan reports on flamboyant attempts at extravagance.

Yes, that's me in the picture, dressed up for the Henley Royal Regatta. The Regatta is on the summer high-society circuit that staggers around London and its environs for months on end, from Royal Ascot, Wimbledon and garden parties to balls of all kinds, doing absolutely nothing and consuming the most enormous quantities of champagne as it goes.

I thought I'd better undertake some in-depth, on-the-spot reporting on the rich. I am now able to report, exclusively for this magazine, that the rich are still there - and still rich.

With Alan Hughes, the designer of this issue - it is important to get the 'look' right - we planned to track down Donald Trump somewhere exotic, preferably on a yacht. We also considered a participant-observer study of the psychopathology of Monte Carlo casino habitués, but we found it hard to put up the cash for the chips.

This has been our basic problem. We have insufficient funds for our action research. Since we work for a non-profit, non-hierarchical, equal-pay, co-operatively-run, radical-progressive journal funded entirely by you, our subscribers, it is easy to feel morally superior to the rich. But it's much harder to track them down and find out what they're up to, which can come expensive.

Once I got past the security guards in Henley it was almost unbearably distressing just to watch, beneath banks of purple umbrellas on the lawns of a very exclusive club by the River Thames, the equivalent of our entire annual budget being knocked back every few minutes in $200 bottles of champagne. From time to time the same amount of money chugged past in the form of a nineteenth-century, reconditioned, steam-driven river cruiser with a very pretty fringe on top.

What is more, I only got in because I was with my twin brother, who belongs to the club. In our youth I was supposed to be the clever one while he always seemed to have the cash, whereas in middle age he has considerably more cash while I have turned out not to be so clever after all. Added to sibling rivalry, from the day my parents took me round my first stately home, I've always felt that somehow I was meant to live in one. So you can see how deeply my feelings for the rich are motivated by envy and the desire for revenge.

I have found it extremely difficult to achieve a full expression of these feelings. There is a chronic shortage of politically-correct terms of personal abuse. I favoured 'rich bastards', but decided this might prove more offensive to some of you than to the rich. 'Swine' is offensive to our four-legged friends. As for 'filthy', what's so great about washing?

Well, do you have any better suggestions? It is, I think, a sad thing if you don't have the right language to be very abusive when absolutely necessary.

Filthy rich! 101 billionaires: who they are and how they grab their loot. The ten richest people in the world. Wealth and well-being: what's the difference? The Human Development Index in full.

Rebel without a clue
Rock hero Kurt Cobain shot himself and left 'Generation X' much as he found it. Steven Hill pays a critical tribute.

The missing billionairess
Nikki van der Gaag on the recipe for a male preserve.

Kickbacks and kleptocracy
Mobutu Sese Seko has refined a tradition of government by thieves in Zaire. Steve Askin and Carole Collins explain how powerful friends have promoted a kleptomaniac and outline practical proposals for change.

The final deal
Fly-and-grab corporate ram-raider Frank Parker meets his Maker and a few others besides. A short story by George Fisher.

Odious debts
Steve Askin argues that irresponsible loans to Third World dictatorships were illegal and asks what we can do.

Letters
Letter from Lagos
Update
Reviews: plus Mrs Beeton classic
Curiosities
Endpiece: by Brandon Aston Jones
Country profile: Morocco

FRONT COVER:
PHOTO BY PAUL BEVITT
MODEL BY RON MUECK
MAGAZINE DESIGNED BY ALAN HUGHES
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER