India's rich can revive nation's deficit, U.S.' can't

American billionaires may pip over their Indian counterparts in the list of the world's richest, however, if they have to revive their countries from the current fiscal deficit it's the Indians who emerge as winners. The Indian billionaires can write off the country's fiscal deficit with two-thirds of their wealth, but the entire wealth of the Americans will not be enough for the same.

Infact, over half of the proposed expenditure for the next fiscal will also be covered in India, if the billionaires bestow their entire wealth, while the American billionaires' total wealth would meet only one-third of their country's proposed $3 trillion expenditure for the next fiscal.

According to the latest Forbes' list of world's billionaires, Americans have reclaimed a dominant position with a huge share of 44 percent. The cumulative wealth of all the Americans among the 793 billionaires globally stands at about $1.05 trillion, which is less than the current $1.3 trillion deficit that U.S. President Barack Obama inherited from the previous regime. In comparison, Forbes has pegged the total wealth of 25 Indian billionaires, both resident and non-resident, at about $109 billion (Rs.5,65,000 crore), which is much more than the country's fiscal deficit of $63 billion (Rs.3,26,515 crore) for this fiscal.

The Indian government's proposal for next fiscal's total expenditure stands at $190 billion (about Rs.9,53,231 crore), which is less than double the total wealth of the billionaires in the country. Meanwhile, the total expenditure proposed by the U.S. federal government last month for fiscal year 2010 stands at about $3 trillion,which is nearly three-times the wealth of American billionaires.