45 percent of world's wealth destroyed: Blackstone CEO (Megan Davies and Walden Siew

  NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Private equity company Blackstone Group LP CEO Stephen Schwarzman says as much as 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed by the global credit crisis.

  "Between 40 and 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed in little less than a year and a half," Schwarzman told an audience Tuesday at the Japan Society. "This is absolutely unprecedented in our lifetime."

  But the U.S. government is committed to the preservation of financial institutions, he said, and will do whatever it takes to restart the economy.

  U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plans to unfreeze credit markets through a new program that will combine public and private capital in a fund that would buy bank toxic assets of up to $1 trillion.

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