Owning the world

The Oil Fund has made Norwegians incredibly wealthy. Its brilliant yet simple plan means they’ll only get richer.

In the 2013 dark comedy, "The Wolf of Wall Street", Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a sleazy money-hungry broker from New York. In it, when giving a speech to riled-up brokers working for him, he proclaims, "I have been a rich man, and I have been a poor man. And I choose rich every f***in' time!"

The Norwegian government has heeded Belfort's call. A hundred years ago, Norway was one of the poorest countries in Europe. It was rural, undeveloped, and reliant on fishing. But in 1969, an exploration ship found oil in the North Sea. They didn't pump the first barrels until 1980, but by the 1990s, the country produced millions of tonnes of oil each year.

This newfound wealth was great, and the welfare state expanded. In 1996, the government set up a sovereign wealth fund, the Oil Fund, to invest the surplus money from the country's oil profits. Since then, the size of this fund has grown by 18.7% per year. So, what's the story with this fund? It's an incredible piece of government fo…