Greece, Spain and Hungary once spawned mighty empires (8th to 6th century BC, 15th century AD and 19th century AD respectively), but now their crumbling economies are far outshined by cousins in the East – particularly China and India.

Yes we all know China and India are giants but today consulting firm BCG came out with its report on Global Wealth trends which has some very interesting empirical data.

Wealth in Asia (excluding Japan) will grow at twice the global rate and in China and India, wealth is expected to grew more than three times the global rate from 2009 to 2014. Another interesting statistic: in China – communist China that is – there are approximately 670,000 millionaire households. There are more millionaires in China that in the old world countries of the United Kingdom (485,000 millionaire households), Germany (430,000 millionaire households), Italy (300,000 millionaire households), Switzerland (285,000 millionaire households) and France (280,00 millionaire households). Only the US and Japan have more millionaire households with 4,715,000 millionaire households and 1,230,000 millionaire households respectively.

But the Old World still has something of an edge – Europe is the wealthiest region overall with $37.1 trillion in assets under management. It will need it for all those bailouts.

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