Jeff Bezos Becomes the Richest Man In Modern History, Topping $150 Billion (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history. The Amazon founder's net worth broke $150 billion in New York on Monday morning, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That's about $55 billion more than Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world's second-richest person. Bezos, 54, has now topped Gates in inflation-adjusted terms. The $100 billion mark that Gates hit briefly in 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom would be worth about $149 billion in today's dollars. That makes the Amazon chief executive officer richer than anyone else on earth since at least 1982, when Forbes published its inaugural wealth ranking. Bezos crossed the threshold just as Amazon prepares to kick off its 36-hour summer sales event, Prime Day. The company's share price was $1,825.73 at 11:10 a.m. in New York, extending its 2018 gain to 56 percent and giving Bezos a $150.8 billion fortune. A little more than a week ago, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg overtook Warren Buffett to become the world's third-richest person.

Comments

Too much?

[Anonymous Coward]

When is enough money enough money? I ponder...

Re:Too much?

[geekmux]

...Seems reasonable to me that someone who starts a company in his garage and eventually takes it public gets some chunk of stock when that happens. Is he somehow evil because the company was quite successful in the years that followed?

I never said he was evil. I haven't worked for him. I merely said he is afflicted with the same disease that many others are afflicted with. Could he find someone qualified to run his business? Certainly. Will he? No, because he's also a Control freak. Even with thousands of employees, he doesn't trust any of them at the helm.

Most people define success as growing a business large enough to the point where they can just enjoy life while work is delegated, not become imprisoned by their own creation. That's just sad, and is exactly what I'm talking about when I define Greed as a disease.

Is he still driving his Honda Accord?

[grungeman]

I do not know too much about Jeff Bezos, but this scene from 1999, where he explains why he is driving a Honda Accord despite being a billionaire, may explain why he is not just your average billionaire, but the richest man on earth.

https://youtu.be/3VUGj34jTqY?t...

Vote me down, but somehow I think he is a great guy.

Re:Is he still driving his Honda Accord?

[grungeman]

Does he? What is known about his today's lifestyle.

Re:The rise of Amazon & the decline of retails

[lgw]

This means more retails shops like Sears/ToysRUs will close down, I am pretty sure this affects retail real estate all over the country. So literally hundred of thousands of people will lose their jobs and there is a cascading effect.

Amazon accounts for around 5% of retail, smaller than WalMart, They're the big dog in online retail, (when they can keep their site up), but they're far from the reason broken businesses like Sears are failing.

Quadrillionare Qunitillionare

[TiggertheMad]

Well stated.More over he does not have 150 billon to play with. Being that he wants to maintain (rigid) control over his company, he cannot sell most of his stock without risking losing that power. Further, that valuation is all just paper.Until he liquidates his position, his valuation will go up and down and follow the stock price. If Amazon stock tanks tomorrow, he is going to be quite a bit less rich. Finally, if / when he sells, dumping that much stock will lower the price, so he is going to have to take a long time to sell off, or accept that he isn't going to get 'full value' for his options. He could probably tank the price by himself just by putting all his stock on the market all at once.

That doesn't mean that he still isn't a rich bitch, though.Given that he has a strong track record in building companies, he could probably get a couple of hundred billion loaned to him by banks with his stock as collateral.If he wanted a 'Trump style' paper empire, he could buy many, many big companies with leveraged collateral, and pay back the interest with profits.He could become the worlds first trillionaire if he stopped fucking around with Amazon, and really pursued the goal.

Of course, who cares? At a certain point, its just numbers in a computer. He'll still be dead of cancer or a bad ticker in 50 years, and he cannot drink any more beer that you or I can in a single day. I kinda feel bad for him. He cannot go anywhere without an armed security escort. He will always have a huge number of people who dislike him, for no other reason than he has stupid piles of cash. In a way, hes trapped by his own success.