 These are the 10 richest men in the world and together they have more wealth than the bottom 40% of the world's population. 10 men, yes men, against 3.2 billion men, women and children. Together these 10 men own assets worth more than $1300 billion. If these assets were to be distributed amongst 25% of the poorest families in the world, then each family would end up with $3,330 odd dollars or close to 2.5 lakh rupees. No one would be poor anymore. Alright, let's broaden our focus from these poor little 10 rich men and look at all billionaires in the world. In March 2020, according to Forbes magazine, there were 2,090 billionaires in the world and then Covid. A SARS-like virus which has infected hundreds in China has now reached the United States. The number of people who have contracted the coronavirus continues to grow. More than 1,600 Americans now are infected, at least 40 have died. A ninth person has tested positive for coronavirus in the UK. The woman flew into London from China and was tested after developing symptoms. Business is shut down, supply chains got disrupted and the stock markets across the world went into a tailspin. Wiping out billions of dollars of wealth. We are here tonight because of the violent market reaction to the very real threat the coronavirus is about to impact this country in ways we have never seen before. I want to know how bad this downturn is going to be. Clearly we've got a downturn with over 3 million first-time jobless claims. We got that. Obviously after Covid ravaging the world's economy and then slowing it down, the number of billionaires across the world would have dropped. Wrong. The number of billionaires actually increased in these two years from, as I said, 2,090 in March 2020 to 2,668 in March 2022. That's a rise of 578 new billionaires. And the wealth of all these billionaires increased by a whopping 42%. You can find all these startling facts and more in this report by Oxfam aptly named Profiting from Brain. You can find it on the internet. Do read it. Oxfam tells us that out of the 578 new billionaires, 62 came from the food and agribusiness industries where they profited immensely from food shortages by marking up prices. The total wealth of these billionaires in the food and agribusiness industries went up by 45%. That is equivalent to 30 lakh crore or 75% of India's budget this year. Other sectors which generated trillions of dollars of extra profit and created new billionaires were oil, pharma and tech. Big oil's profits doubled during the COVID years and the top 5 oil companies of the world saw their highest profits in 5 years. Big pharma gained massively from the vaccines and medicines that were required in the middle of the pandemic and 40 new billionaires emerged from the pharmaceutical sector. Big tech made massive profits because people had to work from home. They needed technology. They needed internet companies. People spent more time on social media. They spent more time streaming video and they bought everything online. COVID has made these global monopolies even stronger and they now have immense pricing power because they're the only sellers left in the market. They can charge anything from the customer. Prices have gone up across the world. The USA is experiencing its highest inflation rate in more than 4 decades. Consumer prices jumped 7.5% compared to a year ago, the steepest annual increase since February 1982. And it has been largely blamed on people having more money, a shortfall of products, supply chain disruptions. But estimates suggest that 60% of the price rise is because of extra profits being made by big business. Food and fuel prices are at an all-time high right now and it's generating more billionaires from these spaces every day. And at the same time, millions of people are slipping into extreme poverty because they can't afford food or fuel. Take this shocking comparison from Oxfam's report. It says that during the COVID years, every 30 hours one new billionaire was created. And every 33 hours in 2022 alone, 1 million people will slip into extreme poverty. Oxfam estimates that inequality of different kinds contribute to the death of one person every 4 seconds. Everyone now recognizes that this extreme inequality caused by a faulty, broken global economic system has to change. IMF, OECD and EU have recommended that all countries should impose windfall gains taxes on the wealthiest people, introduce wealth taxes and also inheritance taxes to take money from those who gained during the COVID years and distribute it to those who lost. Some countries like Argentina and Italy have already implemented some of these taxes. But it is easier said than done because the rich rule the world and they are not going to give up so easily.