A long time ago, Credit Suisse (CS), the second largest bank in Switzerland, pleaded guilty in a trial in which it was sued on the grounds that it aided U.S. citizens to evade taxes through some informal accounts. It agreed to pay a pecuniary penalty of $2.6 billion (TL 5.45 billion). Actually, this penalty means that CS had a narrow escape from a more severe one, as it was accused of deceiving the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) together with tax dodging U.S. citizens. It is said that CS has swindled the IRS for decades.This means that another lawsuit will not be filed against CS, as it has already agreed to pay a cash penalty. CS paid this penalty; however, it got out of the responsibility of revealing the credentials of its mystery clients, as required by Swiss laws. It seems that nothing has changed for CS, apart from the $2.6 billion fine. However, it is just the tip of the iceberg. This scene actually shows that the undeserved gains, which come as a result of an unfair distribution of income, are rising gradually. This is an indication of the world's economic failure.That is why I found French economist Thomas Piketty's book ("Capital in the Twenty-First Century") quite interesting. Actually, Piketty does not introduce something new to economics. At the beginning of the 20th century, just 1 percet of the world's whole population possessed 70 percent of aggregate wealth. This was the bad harvest of the industrial revolution that resulted in labor exploitation on an intercontinental level. The subversion of capitalism, as well as the Soviet and Chinese revolutions as a result of two successive world wars, pulled down this financial obliquity to a small extent across the globe. However, a hundred years later, at the beginning of the 21st century, monopolistic state capitalism, unsecured economic bubbles and illicit money changed the distribution of wealth for the sake of a minor section.Well, the gaps caused by the unfair distribution of income and wealth gets larger when it comes to underdeveloped countries. Research shows that this rising inequality will invite serious political and social troubles in the near future.Now I want to touch upon two reports. The first one is CS's 2013 report of global wealth. The second is the one released by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), a U.K.-based think tank organization, called "Distant Neighbors: Poverty and Inequality in Islington." This second report, which analyzes the economy of London's district of Islington, is of high importance. Islington is a district where middle and lower classes live as the representatives of income inequality and poverty. The report divulges how the residents of Islington have become poorer in the last five years, as well as showing us the potential future of the developed countries and the middle classes. The following statement in CS's Global Wealth Report 2013 is almost a summary of the whole report: "We expect global wealth to rise by nearly 40 percent over the next five years, reaching $334 trillion by 2018. Emerging markets (EM) are responsible for 29 percent of that growth. China will account for nearly 50 percent of the increase in EM wealth. Wealth growth will primarily be driven by growth in the middle segment, but the number of millionaires will also rise markedly over the next five years."The report shows us that the unfair distribution of wealth continues in favor of the developed countries. It also reveals that the EM will increase in the upcoming five years in accordance with the relative growth rates of economies such as China and India. Although China and India still constitute 37.85 percent of the global population, they possess only 10.71 percent of the global wealth.On the other hand, North America hosts 5.71 percent of the world's population, but has one third of the aggregate global wealth. This is still a big question, but we will see that the disproportion of wealth will start to unveil in the next five years. Another striking aspect of the report is that the rapid growth rate and rapid capital inflow into EM countries will generate a stratum of ultra-wealthy.For example, the number of people that have a wealth of $1 billion is 45 in Germany, which is the fourth-biggest economy of the world with its population of 80 million people.However when it comes to Turkey, which is the 17th biggest economy in the world with a population of 78 million, the number drops to 40. In the three biggest developing countries, Turkey, Brazil and India, the number of dollar billionaires is triple the number in Japan and Britain. Doubtlessly, this is a heavy burden for countries, as such an accumulation of wealth in a single place may set the stage for democratic and political problems.For us, there are two important inferences to be drawn here: One is the capital that was previously in the form of credit capital inflow into the EMs has started to come as Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) since 2008. This has caused rapid growth in these countries and unraveled a new section of wealthy. However, the same situation has increased the level of poverty in the developed counties as revealed by the aforementioned NEF report.The same report says about Islington: "Poverty is deepening and inequality is widening in Islington. After five years of economic uncertainty, public sector cuts, and now welfare reform, lower-income residents are under more pressure than ever. The gap between the wealthiest and the rest is growing as house prices and wage polarization squeeze middleincome families. By 2020, Islington will be a starkly polarized and unequal borough."It can be said that even if it seems a trend for the time being, developed and developing countries are getting closed to each other. The middle strata of the developed countries are getting poorer. This process, as required by the dynamics of capitalism, is also generating a section of ultra-wealthy in developing countries. For now, I may say that this disequilibrium will have negative political reflections in the next year. In the next column, I will address whether this turbulent process can be handled, a question that has also preoccupied Turkey recently.