Billionaires' club need not translate to good leadership

PRESIDENT-elect Donald Trump has assembled the richest cabinet in American presidential history. Yet, influential studies show that neither vast personal wealth nor a glowing career in business is sufficient for good political leadership.

Mr Trump has chosen a group of super-wealthy persons to serve as top officials in his administration: Chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson, as Secretary of State; billionaire investor Wilbur Ross as Commerce Secretary; billionaire Chicago Cubs owner Todd Ricketts as Deputy Commerce Secretary; former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary; and billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary (she is the wife of the heir to the Amway empire).

The brilliant American diplomat and geo-strategist, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, considers persons with business backgrounds as the most ill prepared to exercise foreign policy leadership. As a result of their inexperience such persons are forced to rely on the bureaucracy for direction, he argues.