ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Forbes Great fortunes are notoriously easy to lose. Not so for the nation’s 25 richest clans, who’ve bucked the odds and held onto their wealth over generations, in some cases since the late 1800s. Collectively they are worth $722 billion this year, $11 billion less than the top 25 were a year ago. These scions and builders of America’s great businesses own brands like Campbell Soup CPB +1.71% , Windex, Hyatt Hotels H -1.89% , OxyContin and more. Among this elite group are familiar families like the Waltons and Rockefellers and lesser-knowns like the Sacklers . One newcomer is likely the least known of all: the Goldman family , whose late patriarch Sol quietly purchased hundreds of properties across New York City. Until now, the family has succeeded in keeping the size and reach of their sprawling real estate empire largely under wraps. The Waltons are the wealthiest family in the U.S., and have been for the three years that FORBES has tracked the wealth of America’s Richest Famil...

Exclusive: In a world darkened by war and disorder, a rare glimmer of optimism broke through as Colombia’s government signed a long-delayed peace accord with the country’s primary guerrilla movement, as Jonathan Marshall describes. By Jonathan Marshall With terrorist massacres hitting the news every few days, and financial markets reeling over the uncertain future of Europe, it’s no wonder pundits like Roger Cohen of the New York Times are warning that “the forces of disintegration are on the march” and “the foundations of the postwar world … are trembling.” But the news media have given only glancing coverage to one of the most positive developments of our time: the end to 52 years of armed conflict between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos. That bloody war took the lives of a quarter million people and displaced another 6.9 million, more even than in Syria . It produced countless crimes and atro...