In 1959 the church was $40 million in debt. It needed the tithing money from the members then. N Eldon Tanner was brought in to help restructure the church’s finances which he did a good job in doing. The church got more into investing. It ran trust companies and under Gordon B Hinkley Ensign Peak was started. Unused tithing funds were invested in equities and today Ensign Peak alone generates more money for the church than tithing does.

The church no longer needs its member for cash flow. But this is something the church doesn’t want its members to know about. It still expects missionaries to pay for their own missions and members to be janitors.

Really what the church has become is a holding company that has a division that does weird religious shit. This division could dry up and blow away and the rest of the organization would be just fine. In another 50 years the church could be worth $1 Trillion.

If you start with 100 billion and grow it compound at 7% per annum, it will reach 1 billion in about 35 years and will be well over 2 trillion in 50 years.

If the total church wealth today is 200 billion, including real estate for instance, 7% will get the church past $6.5 trillion in 50 years.

Those estimates assume zero additions from tithing or other external sources. If those are added to the principle, the church could reach $10 trillion in 50 years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2023 11:07AM by Lot's Wife.

Yep. I've been saying that for a while now. The church doesn't need butts in the pews. They just need the façade of a religion to run their holding company.

We shouldn't underestimate how much faster things can grow when some of your money gets tax breaks that religion receives.

Remember the Rodney Stark Effect - assuming current conditions will remain unchanged for the next hundred years. He predicted several hundred million Mormons late this century, based on growth in the 1970s. Turned out to be a tad optimistic.

The Church is under serious financial scrutiny in all the countries where the bulk of its wealth comes in. This may affect government regulation, and it likely will affect donations.

Much of LDS Inc’s current growth is in very poor countries. That could become a major drain on finances.

The world economy could take a major hit. Suppose Russia uses tactical nukes and China decided this might be a good time to invade Taiwan. The markets would have a very bad hair day.

The next hundred years will not be the same as the last 25.

The church already has the principle, and 7% is far lower than a long-duration portfolio has yielded not just in the last 25 years but nearly the last 100–the entire period for which good data are available.

If a geopolitical shock occurred, central banks would loosen policy and asset prices would skyrocket. The result would be a higher rate of appreciation.

Things change. There are any number of events that could result in the church bleeding money rather quickly. Famine in Africa. Multibillion dollar embezzlement scandal in the church. One of the suits to get tithing back because of fraud is successful.

I remember when Sears was basically the Walmart of the 1950s. DEC was the second biggest computer company in the world. WordPerfect was the most used word processor in the world. Lehman Brothers was good at whatever it was they did. Enron had the smartest guys in the room.

LDS Inc probably will be a trillion dollar enterprise at some point, but a major financial reversal is within the realm of possibility. Their religion subsidiary is struggling now.

To me, the church seems more like Berkshire Hathaway, than like Sears, DEC, WordPerfect, et al.

But I agree with your point

BOJ , the church is not an operational company at this point for whom reputation and operational competence matter. A billion a year in business revenue is chump change.

The church is now a microcosm of the US economy. The Q15 could close the church and the funds would remain. And as an epitome of the economy it no longer faces company risk, industry risk, counterparty risk, or political risk.

The only thing that matters is how the US economy does in the form of markets. And there is a put option in the form of a central bank that will not let markets collapse because that would mean letting the global economy seize and virtually everyone die.

All that must be done to stop that is to create more credit by turning a knob on a computer. Look what has happened in the last 25 years: there have been massive crises and markets have risen more rapidly than normal. What that tells us is that bad news will cause broad-based portfolios like the church’s to appreciate faster.

wowbagger, may I have an “amen?”



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2023 09:23PM by Lot's Wife.

This much money being secretively held is an open invitation for someone to run off with some of it. I'd be surprised if it hasn't already happened.They probably wouldn't miss it.

"In 1959 the church was $40 million in debt". Now over 100 billion in plus. That could become a real faith promoting story.

They certainly wouldn't tell the membership. The embezzler would resign "for personal reasons" or something.

Edit: This post (mis-located) is in response to shakinthedust's remark, above, "they probably wouldn't miss it."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2023 01:59PM by caffiend.

Edit: entry error



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2023 02:00PM by caffiend.

If such an embezzlement involved breaking federal securities laws, keeping the information from being public may not be an option.

What about "Religious Freedom"?

?

Think again!

25 years ago: people widely did not have any internet/ ability to look something up and get instant information.

For most people, today's Internet/ call phone era could not have been imagined in the mid-late 90s.

Likewise, most of us can not imagine what civilization/ progression/ life will be like in 25, or even 50 years.

I'll just say 2 things: law suits
Mormons > BYU = "law" + "suits" LDS

People waking up? Seeking freedom, and happiness...
There's only hope. Mormonism is a gamble, for a loss

Does anyone think the church already has a trillion with their properties and piggy banks?

Not me.

A hundred billion? OK, believable. $200 billion - maybe. $300 billion - that's where I'd get very skeptical.

A trillion? Just no. $100 billion is a very big pile of money.

The church owns two huge agricultural properties in Florida, roughly a half million acres, 2% of the land in Florida. If the land is worth $20,000 an acre (generous for ag/ranch land). That'd be $10 billion, 1% of a trillion dollars.

They have 300 temples. Say they average 5 acres each, and can be sold for $1 million an acre, That's 1,500 acres, or $1.5 billion dollars. (And trust me, the temple lot in places like Bismarck, ND, or Winnipeg will not bring $1 million an acre)

So all the temples and all the church farm land in Florida would, between them, be a small but noticeable bite out of $100 billion. It would be a drop in the bucket as a portion of one trillion.

My guess is $200-250 billion, comprising the Ensign Peak funds plus all real estate and subsidiary companies.

At 7% per annum, that's a trillion dollars in 20 years. At the 10% more typical for investment enterprises with the characteristics of the LDS church (meaning a university endowment), it's a trillion in 15 years.

The weaker the economy, the faster the billion standard is reached because of the way central banks are using quantitative easing. Absent an asteroid destroying civilization, the writing is on the wall.

I’d believe $250 billion. And sure, they will eventually reach a trillion barring a catastrophe, like the Gulf Stream stopping, an asteroid, a volcanic island blowing its top, a nuclear skirmish, all of which could happen.

True, all of those things could happen.

But short of an event that destroys the entire global financial infrastructure--none of which your examples would necessarily do--we must ask what the effects would be. And if monetary authorities remain in place, the answer is clear: open the spigots to drive the money supply up and encourage consumption lest a depression finish the work of natural catastrophe.

As I suggested above, look at the crises of the last 28 years. They fall into three categories: economic/financial, geopolitical, and natural like COVID. Take any of those crises and chart what happened to financial markets in the ensuing five years. In every case the stock markets rose dramatically.

In particular consider the 2007-2009 crisis and the COVID debacle. Look what they did to markets over a five year period--and in the case of the Great Recession, over a ten year period. As long as the basic financial infrastructure remains in place, that pattern will repeat and those who are long assets will grow richer faster. In other words, the church has amassed more wealth BECAUSE of crises.

What drives markets now is monetary policy, and what drives monetary policy is economic shocks.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2023 02:08AM by Lot's Wife.

Last year the Trib ran an article claiming the value of the church's real estate holdings in the US to be ~$16 billion. That doesn't include holdings in other countries.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2424098,2424098#msg-2424098

I think a repeat of something like the Spanish Inquisition could rear its ugly head.

One theocratic entity having all the power and money is a very bad thing.

All LDS members should know by now their church can't be trusted.

It could produce a Book of Mormon, ON GOLD PLATED!

IF it could/ would share With Mormons - and the world (though few in it are interested) - Joseph Smith's ROCK lighting up, his unedited, original journal writings and/ or handwritten notes for his sick book, or At Least The Book of Morons salad on gold paper plates.

Ensign Peak is but a portion of the wealth.

There are overseas holdings we don't "officially" know of.

Then the options, futures, commodities, warrants, artwork, mineral rights, publishing rights, copyrights and patents.

Here's a fun fact that recently came to light.

The church paid for the right to purchase the land the Layton temple sits on 10 years before the temple was announced.

The owners of the property were under a strict NDA.

These hidden assets don't come near a trillion dollars, but would be significant.