Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.
June 19th, 2008 — Fashion, Film, Money, Youth
Having turned eighteen in April, actor Emma Watson is now getting access to more than just bigger digital boobs, or her $20 million Harry Potter/”Hermione Granger” fortune: She’s getting grown-up-style endorsements: A reported $5.8 million, 2-year deal to replace Keira Knightley as the new face of Chanel fragrance, just like BWE.tv proudly noted.
June 11th, 2008 — Controversy, Government, Money, Politics, Sex
Better buy his pops one ginormous Father’s Day gift: Eliot Spitzer
Since his fast-moving disgrace and subsequent resignation on March 17 over a prostitution scandal, former NY State governor and superdelegate Eliot Spitzer has been maintaining an incredibly low profile.
Indeed, many who watched his resignation, live, on television, may remember wondering what this once seemingly unstoppable leader, not yet fifty years old, would do with the rest of his life. Assuming he would refuse Playgirl‘s offer to pose nude—which apparently he, thankfully, did—what would his next act be? How would he make a living, given his pariah status? Where would he go?
Apparently, Spitzer’s gone the same place all kids go when they mess up: Home.
June 2nd, 2008 — Culture, Money
“Be vewwy quiet. I’m hunting duckets”: Poor old rich guy
I find the nuances of wealth endlessly fascinating. But the aspect of it that I find most intriguing is the carefully maintained illusion of limitless capacity the rich apparently work to maintain.
April 17th, 2008 — Controversy, Culture, Finance, Media, Money, Work
According to Forbes.com’s 2007 list of top TV personalities, in the year between June 2006 and June 2007, talk show host Oprah Winfrey earned over a quarter of a billion dollars, $260 million, precisely, or over $1 million a day.
Pauper.
In a report cited by The New York Times yesterday, Institutional Investor’s Alpha (IIA) magazine ranked the 50 top hedge fund earners of last year. (The incomes on this list are so outrageous that you need to have made at least $210 million to get on it. Were Oprah a fund manager, she’d have ranked 38th.)
At #1, John Paulson, right, 52, of Paulson & Company, utterly nuked his competition by taking home compensation of…hold your breath, people…$3.7 billion.
That’s not his net worth. That’s three billion, seven hundred million dollars in salary.
March 3rd, 2008 — Automotive, Crime, Money, Politics
In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Mark Maremont ran the numbers on Prince Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei, right, and his alleged $14.8 billion bum rush of the small, oil-drenched, former British protectorate’s treasury.
You’ve heard of Brunei, of course. It’s located in Southeast Asia, almost completely enwrapped within Malaysia, a little smaller than Delaware. It’s head, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah, 61, is the world’s wealthiest monarch, with a fortune Forbes estimates at $22 billion. He lives in a $1.4 billion (in 1984 US dollars), 2 million-plus-square-foot palace with 1,788 rooms, including 257 bathrooms. His personal fleet of automobiles is believed to number between 3,000-5,000 cars, including 531 Mercedes-Benzes, 367 Ferraris, 362 Bentleys, 185 BMWs, 177 Jaguars, 160 Porsches, 130 Rolls-Royces, and 20 Lamborghinis. (Take that, ballers.)
Prince Jefri—uh, Prince Duli Yang Teramat Mulia Paduka Seri Pengiran Digadong Sahibul Mal Pengiran Muda Haji Jefri Bolkiah to you—is Hassanal’s youngest brother, the 53-year-old baby of the sultan’s three bros.
Apparently, for a number of years, Jefri served as finance minister and chairman of the Brunei Investment Agency (BIA), where his role was to sock away the nation’s money, not stuff it in his socks. As well, since the sultan is an absolute monarch—reportedly, he recently had himself declared infallible under Bruneian law—the nation’s money is his money. So, he’s more than a little pissed that
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