Panicked super rich buying boltholes with private airstrips to escape if poor rise up

• 12:14, 26 January 2015
• Updated 15:29, 1 September 2015
• By Alex Wellman

Hedge fund managers are buying up remote ranches and land in places like New Zealand to flee to in event of wide-spread civil unrest

Robert Johnson Super rich hedge fund managers are buying 'secret boltholes' where they can hideout in the event of civil uprising against growing inequality, it has been claimed.
Nervous financiers from across the globe have begun purchasing landing strips, homes and land in areas such as New Zealand so they can flee should people rise up.

With growing inequality and riots such as those in London in 2011 and in Ferguson and other parts of the USA last year, many financial leaders fear they could become targets for public fury.

Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told people at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes.

He said: “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway."

Mr Johnson, said the economic situation could soon become intolerable as even in the richest countries inequality was increasing.

He said: "People need to know there are possibilities for their children – that they will have the same opportunity as anyone else.

"There is a wicked feedback loop. Politicians who get more money tend to use it to get more even money."

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Hideaway: Rich people are plotting to escape to remote parts of the world

His comments were backed up by Stewart Wallis, executive director of the New Economics Foundation, who when asked about the comments told CNBC Africa: "Getaway cars, the airstrips in New Zealand and all that sort of thing, so basically a way to get off.

"If they can get off, onto another planet, some of them would."

He added: "I think the rich are worried and they should be worried. I mean inequality, why does it matter?

"Most people have heard the Oxfam statistics that now we’ve got 80, the 80 richest people in the world, having more wealth that the bottom three-point-five billion, and very soon we’ll get a situation where that one percent, one percent of the richest people have more wealth than everybody else, the 99."