Chapter 11 The Undercover Billionaire

'If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.’ — Paul Getty The Three Comma Club is the most exclusive club in the world. Its members include pop stars and politicians, inventors and industrialists, media magnates and mining moguls, heirs and heirs-in-waiting. Each has crossed a threshold marked by nine zeroes separated by three commas. Each is blessed or burdened with more money than they could spend in a dozen lifetimes. There are just over 3,000 of them, a minuscule sliver of humanity. And yet they wield enormous power over economies, governments, and society at large. They are despised as much as they are admired, envied as much as they are courted. These are the billionaires. Welcome to a guided tour of a world where money has slipped its earthly bounds.