Billionaires? The world has 1,826 of them - and 541 live in America

OPINION:

There’s lots of billionaires out there 1,826, to be exact, according to recent painstaking research of Forbes magazine. More than a third prefer the urbane and urban life, and the Big Apple is the town of choice. The publication says that with 78 resident billionaires, New York City has the largest uber-rich population on the planet. But wait, there’s more.

Then there’s Moscow (68 billionaires), Hong Kong (64), London (46), Beijing (45), Mumbai (33), Seoul (29), Istanbul (28), Paris and San Francisco (26) to round out the top-10. Though things can be financially dicey for much of America these days, the nation itself remains billionaire-central.

“Thanks the total of 541 billionaire residents in the U.S., American cities have an edge in their shares of billionaires compared to others around the world. Eleven cities, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and Dallas, have more than 10 billionaire residents,” reports Forbes staffer Liyan Chen.

And the richest of them all is still Bill Gates, who weighs in with $79.3 billion.