Monday, August 31, 2009

Bill Gates' charity blows $258 million in India

[an excerpt] Gates announced the ten-year, $100 million Avahan during his much-publicized visit to the country in 2002. This was, and still is, the largest-ever initiative in India for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

[and then, it went south from there.....]




read:::Bill Gates' Indian Education

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Begging for Billionaires (the movie)


On the heels of screenings at film festivals in Minnesota, California and Texas; "Begging for Billionaires: The Attack on Property Rights in America" will debut in the Kansas City metro area where much of the film was shot. The once-time, public screening is 5:30 p.m. on Sat., Sept. 19 at the Glenwood Arts Theater, 9575 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park, Kan. Tickets are available on the festival’s Web site (www.kansasfilm.com) for $8.

“Kansas Citizens have heard about this project for years, and a lot of them are anxious to finally see it,” says Begging for Billionaires director Phil Klein. “We filmed for four years in Kansas City, St. Louis, Sugar Creek and Arnold, Missouri.” The Kansas City scenes depict family-owned businesses displaced by the controversial land grabs devised to clear space the Sprint Arena (still without a permanent tenant) and the privately-owned Power & Light District.

read:::full article


beggingforbillionaires.com



Friday, August 21, 2009

Book review: The Accidental Billionaires

A book review excerpt:

Witness The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding Of Facebook—A Tale Of Sex, Money, Genius, And Betrayal, Ben Mezrich’s attempt to cash in on the Facebook phenomenon...........Mining his Harvard background once again, he weaves the story of Facebook’s origins as an idea for a hotornot.com-style dating website—but exclusive to the campus, like the university’s elite social clubs—into a hyperbolic techno-capitalist romance novel, complete with faithless lovers, spurned suitors, and jilted spouses.


article

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Harvard: #1 in billionaire alums

The Top Billionaire Universities

No. 1 Harvard University

Number of billionaire alumni: 54

Harvard has churned out more 10-figure titans than any other school on the planet (counting both undergraduate and graduate degrees). The school's roster of billionaire alumni includes Michael Bloomberg, Sumner Redstone, David Rockefeller, Sr. and William Randolph Hearst III.

No. 2 Stanford University

Number of billionaire alumni: 25
Stanford has the second-highest number of billionaire grads in the world, including Charles Schwab. Still, the Harvard of the West is probably better known for its billionaire dropouts. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page earned master's degrees in computer science from Stanford before leaving Stanford doctorate programs to start the famously profitable search engine. Another (very rich) quitter: Microsoft Chief Exec Steve Ballmer.

No. 3 University of Pennsylvania

Number of billionaire alumni: 18
Early last year, U. Penn had 27 billionaire graduates, thanks to its famous business school, Wharton. But the financial meltdown last year shaved off almost a third of that list, including hedge fund tycoon Peter Briger Jr. and money maven Marc Rowan. Amongst the school's remaining billionaire grads: Ronald and Leonard Lauder, and Michael Milken.

No. 4 Columbia University (tie)

Number of billionaire alumni: 16
Amongst Columbia's grads is affable billionaire Warren Buffett, the world's second-richest man. While studying in New York (class of 1951), the Berkshire Hathaway chief learned from value-investing legend Benjamin Graham. Other rich alum: Wal-Mart Chairman S. Robson Walton and Henry Kravis.

No. 4 Yale University (tie)

Number of billionaire alumni: 16
Yale is alma mater to a slew of billionaire clans, including the Mars chocolate fortune (Forrest Mars Jr. and John Mars) and Cargill agricultural fortune (Cargill MacMillan Jr. and Whitney MacMillan). Investor Eddie Lampert and Blackstone Group co-founder Stephen Schwarzman also graduated from Yale; both were members of the infamous secret society Skull & Bones.




Forbes article

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