There are 3,428 billionaires in the world, according to the wealth trackers at Forbes: 400 more than last year, so basically the world gained a billionaire a day.

At that pace can a trillionaire be far off? Owen A. Lamont, senior vice president of Acadian Asset Management, figures the world’s first U.S. dollar trillionaire will walk among us by the end of the decade if not earlier.

Elon Musk is the most likely candidate. The CEO of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX was worth US$808.1 billion at last counting, miles ahead of the fortunes of the next two richest men, Google’s Larry Page at $314.9 billion and Sergey Brin at $290.4 billion.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc. fame at $275.3 billion is a distant fourth.

A compensation package awarded to Musk last year by Tesla’s board could pay him $1 trillion over the next decade, but the highly anticipated IPO of SpaceX or a rise in Tesla’s share price could easily push him over the trillionaire line this year, said Lamont.

So what does that mean? “Ultimately, the word ‘trillionaire’ reflects arbitrary numbering conventions. However, words have power, and it’s worth pausing to reflect on this new addition to the U.S. vocabulary,” he said.

In this spirit, Lamont takes an fascinating wander back in history to look at the first millionaire and first billionaire.

The word “millionaire” was first coined in the 1700s to describe the newly rich investors in the monetary innovations of John Law, who Lamont describes as “a swashbuckling Scottish financier.”

Law created a new scheme for French public finances that ended in the devastating boom and bust “Mississippi Bubble” of 1720. Law fled France after the scheme collapsed and died in poverty in Venice.

“He rapidly went from being one of the most admired men in Europe to one of the most despised. Something for Musk to think about,” said Lamont.

The first billionaire was a very different character. A teetotalling Baptist, John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company in 1870 and went on to control almost all of the oil refining in the United States.

He too was not immune to the “winds of politics.” President Teddy Roosevelt and Rockefeller squared off in what has been described as “one of America’s most famous political and economic clashes” which culminated in the White House filing an anti-trust suit against Standard Oil in 1906. Five years later, the Supreme Court ordered the breakup of the company.

Today as fears grow about bubbles arising from the roaring stock market and AI’s dizzying ascent, should we be concerned about a newly minted trillionaire?

Not according to Lamont. “There are eight billion people on planet Earth, and as the planet gets richer and average wealth rises, we’d expect the maximum wealth also to rise. That’s the good way to generate trillionaires: increase real total wealth,” he wrote.

The next milestone — quadrillionaire, arriving by 2130. Sign up here to get Posthaste delivered straight to your inbox.

What’s going on with the bond market? Despite a tame core inflation reading earlier this week, the yield on 30-year Government of Canada bonds crested 4 per cent, the highest since June 2007. BMO Capital Markets chief economist Douglas Porter says this is a “seismic shift” in long-term yields, which from 2015 to early 2022 averaged under 2 per cent.

Nor is it just Canada, he said: 30-year Treasury yields shot to nearly 5.2 per cent, also the highest in almost 20 years.

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McLister on mortgages

Want to learn more about mortgages? Mortgage strategist Robert McLister’s Financial Post column can help navigate the complex sector, from the latest trends to financing opportunities you won’t want to miss. Plus check his mortgage rate page for Canada’s lowest national mortgage rates, updated daily.

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Today’s Posthaste was written by Pamela Heaven with additional reporting from Financial Post staff and Bloomberg.

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