You could fund a lot of curiosity rovers with that money.
Highways, bullet trains, tons of research grants...
This kind of reality check is extremely effective.
I think I'll steal this. Thanks
Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder what would anyone do with a trillion dollars... I really can't comprehend this numbers...
what ever they want.. :-) I agree, even a billion dollars, as free cash (as opposed to illiquid property holdings) is mind boggling. At IMF .9% interest rates that is $25,000 a day you would have to spend just to spend off the interest income.
I vividly remember the BBC reports about the US government flying planes filled with pallets of cash into Iraq - apparently $12 billion in cash was flow in:
Re: Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
#43a $3 billion dollar return on $76 is not that impressive, this is about a 3.9% return. to put this in perspective, in January 2014 30 year treasuries were yielding 3.92% (although they have come down quite a bit since then).
I assume you mean $76 billion. Because otherwise that would be a healthy 3,947,368,421% return. ;)
Re: Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
#44Several friends of mine work at the Gates Foundation up here in Seattle and they comment a lot about the pressure they're under to GIVE AWAY the Gates' money faster. There's a running "joke" internally there (Gates himself does not find it funny and puts a lot of pressure internally on the folks responsible) that it's been nearly impossible to outspend Gates' financial gains as his own wealth keeps growing too fast.…
It's not surprising. The GF is paid for by disbursing a set % of the endowment's value each year. Obviously the people managing the endowment only have one goal which is to keep it growing.
Re: Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
#45Several friends of mine work at the Gates Foundation up here in Seattle and they comment a lot about the pressure they're under to GIVE AWAY the Gates' money faster. There's a running "joke" internally there (Gates himself does not find it funny and puts a lot of pressure internally on the folks responsible) that it's been nearly impossible to outspend Gates' financial gains as his own wealth keeps growing too fast.…
This seems to fly in the face of the approach that Bill and Melinda have publicly claimed to have taken. Instead of "writing a big check" they're managing (very directly it seems) the allocation of funds to effective and worthwhile programs. There may internal pressure to "give money away" but I doubt many have the freedom to start writing checks for ...anything.
Despite the internal commentary, which is mostly in jest, spending arbitrarily is going to get you fired pretty quick. But there is still a metric ton of pressure to find the right things to spend money on, and they struggle to do so in a lot of cases.
It's interesting to think about from an entrepreneurial perspective, that The Gates Foundation has plenty of capital to "invest" but the companies and programs are often not mature enough to warrant massive grants. There might be a ton of small NGOs doing awesome work all over the world, and they can take small grants (XX,000-XXX,000), but imagine what a nightmare it becomes for them if given the burden of tens of millions of dollars all the sudden. Money solves a lot of problems in the nonprofit world, but sudden cash infusions can often create a lot of bizarre problems.
And on the other side, even if The Gates Foundation gives thousands of six figure grants out, that's not going to make a dent in the overall pool of cash.
Re: Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
#46These lists are pretty arbitrary. They don't include more than $32 trillion hidden in off shore accounts. Putin, Gaddafi, Mubarak, and other third world dicators have many trillions stashed away. That is not even to count the monarchs who practically own entire countries.
I wonder what would anyone do with a trillion dollars... I really can't comprehend this numbers...
You could wallpaper the land area of Cyprus with dollar bills and still have around 40 billion left.
Re: Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
#47So I guess the koch brothers' combined estate is really #1?
The Walton family fortune is considerably larger. Only 2 Walton's make the top 10, but there are 6 Walton billionaires, for a total of $175 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton_family
Before the fiscal cliff, WMT moved their dividend pay date forward by a few days so that the Waltons could pay 2012 cap gains on their dividend. They saved over 100 million in tax on ONE single dividend. This level of wealth is almost beyond comprehension.
(http://money.cnn.com/gallery/investing/2012/12/21/fiscal-cli...)
Re: Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems to fly in the face of the approach that Bill and Melinda have publicly claimed to have taken. Instead of "writing a big check" they're managing (very directly it seems) the allocation of funds to effective and worthwhile programs. There may internal pressure to "give money away" but I doubt many have the freedom to start writing checks for ...anything.
Despite the internal commentary, which is mostly in jest, spending arbitrarily is going to get you fired pretty quick. But there is still a metric ton of pressure to find the right things to spend money on, and they struggle to do so in a lot of cases. It's interesting to think about from an entrepreneurial perspective, that The Gates Foundation has plenty of capital to "invest" but the companies and programs are oft…
I wonder if an element of the foundation could be helping to scale or "staff up" these NGO's to be able to scale/deal with an influx of funding?
Obviously, "staffing up" is time intensive, but I would think they would need an alternative approach if finding worthy organizations becomes difficult.
Re: Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
#49Several friends of mine work at the Gates Foundation up here in Seattle and they comment a lot about the pressure they're under to GIVE AWAY the Gates' money faster. There's a running "joke" internally there (Gates himself does not find it funny and puts a lot of pressure internally on the folks responsible) that it's been nearly impossible to outspend Gates' financial gains as his own wealth keeps growing too fast.…
He should set up a website, enter your bank details (and maybe some unique personal information), click submit and it sends you a randomised sum of money, once.
Heck, make the proviso that it signs you up to his annual Gates notes for life ;-)
Re: Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
#50a $3 billion dollar return on $76 is not that impressive, this is about a 3.9% return. to put this in perspective, in January 2014 30 year treasuries were yielding 3.92% (although they have come down quite a bit since then).
I assume you mean $76 billion. Because otherwise that would be a healthy 3,947,368,421% return. ;)
haha yes, $76 billion.
also note that if bill gates had simply put all his money in an sp500 index fund last year he would have earned %13.69, or $10.8 billion