I'm afraid all this talk about the methodologies used by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank is too academic and is going right over my head.

As a layman, I'm just interested to know how Forbes magazine (a publication not targeted at academics) compiles its list of billionaires.

Did they base their calculations on the par values of the equity held by the rich? If so, there could be many more billionaires out there, if they would only cash in their shares.

On the other hand, did Forbes use current market value as the basis of their calculations? If so, a fair number of entries from the bottom of the list risk being booted off if their net worth were re-calculated based on par value.

They are merely millionaires (poor things!) masquerading as billionaires.