Bill Gates needs more money
When the NASDAQ took a dip a few months back and Microsoft Corp.'s Bill
Gates lost eleven billion dollars in one week, some jealous competitors (is
it grammatically correct to have the words Microsoft and
competitor in the same sentence?) asked the Believe It or Not!
museum if they could borrow the world's smallest violin to play him a tune.
Indeed, few shed tears for Redmond's fortunate son.
But a custodian in Minneapolis wept. So did an administrative assistant in
Albuquerque. And a personal shopper in Coral Gables bawled her eyes out
until they were bloodshot.
None of these people had ever met Bill Gates, and they couldn't care less if
he uses coupons when he goes shopping. They wailed because last year their
Microsoft stock touched $120 a share, and this year, when the Justice
Department made a move to help run the company "better," their stock plunged
to as low as $60.
Bill Gates can afford to lose a third of his net worth, but the average
person's 401k, IRA, KEOGH, or rainy day mutual fund can't. And most regular
people are getting a little irregular over it.
"Monopoly, antitrust, noncompetitive practices...these are just big words,"
says Jay O'Melvey, who is not an economist, but is president of the Oklahoma
chapter of the Alan Greenspan Fan Club. "Basically, you have the largest
organization in the country, the U.S. government -- itself, probably the
most fiscally irresponsible -- telling one of the most successful companies,
Microsoft, to throttle back. This all flies in the face of a free economy.
The government supports, and in many cases, subsidizes, weak companies and
fights strong ones."
Of course it's not just regular people who have their eyes on Gates'
strongbox. Institutional investors, like pension fund directors and
insurance companies, also wring their handkerchiefs as stocks palpitate.
And it's not just Gates' tollbooth change, which could feed the entire
country of Borneo for a year, that's under the microscope. This year Larry
Ellison's wallet moved to a close second from carry-on size to mandatory
check-in (a moot analogy because he flies his own $38-million Gulfstream).
The point is, when today's technology robber barons prosper, we all do. For
some, the prosperity translates to a higher-valued retirement portfolio; for
others, there are ancillary benefits. Last year, for instance, philanthropic
donations were at an all-time high. "I don't know how my business could have
survived last year without so many generous donations to my clients," says
Soho's Bruce Babcock, who supplies animal manure to artists in his area.
"This year, though, it's a whole other story. But I'm optimistic. I've
ordered four more potbellied pigs."
More to the point, you're probably asking yourself what you can do to make
Bill Gates and his billionaire club pals richer, which means help them help
you.
Well, for the most part, you've already contributed. You've made Windows the
most popular operating system, Intel the most popular processor, and, well,
we have no explanation for priceline.com's success except that maybe they
found a whole colony of mushroom smokers who thought it was amusing to see
William Shatner's toupee flap as he does his Pete Townsend imitation.
But you can do more! For instance:
| Whatever brand PC you have, it's time for an upgrade. In fact, it's always time. Why not consider buying the latest from Dell Computer Corp.? (NASDAQ: DELL). Billionaire Michael Dell will thank you and so will the grandmother in Denver who has used the stock appreciation to help pay for her prescription medication for the past four years. And if you already have a PC, why not consider buying a Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) UltraSPARC Workstation? Of course Scott McNealy will appreciate it, but so will an orphanage in Milwaukee that was the beneficiary of 50 shares of the company's stock. Of course if you have both a PC and a workstation, you could add an Apple Computer Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iMac and that would please the heck out of Steve Jobs and make a lot of other people happy, not the least of whom is an investment club of retired postal workers in Phoenix. |
|
Looking for something on the Net? Start where many advertisers hope you will
start: Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO). Wunderkinder David Filo and Jerry Yang will
thank you, and so will the carpenter in Indianapolis who has been
accumulating shares at the rate of five per month to save for his daughter's
college education. And if what you're looking for is a book, Jeff "Big
Money" Bezos hopes you'll shop Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) as does the
paperboy in DeKalb, Ill., who owns five shares though the ILUTMA (Illinois
Uniform Transfers to Minors Act) account his father maintains for him.
DSL and cable ISPs are nice, but Steve Case still hopes you'll consider AOL
Inc. (NYSE: AOL); so does a nurse in Austin, Texas, for whom liberation from
her twenty-two-year bed-pan-cleaning tour of duty is just one more stock
split away. And speaking of things you may not need, why not take a weekend
to clean out the attic, basement, and/or cellar and post all that useless
stuff on eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY). Pierre Omidyar will appreciate it, but not
nearly as much as Mr. Corcoran's senior economics class at Polk High School
in Joplin, Mo. Their grade is based on the performance of their virtual
portfolio, and they're bullish on eBay because, as one student reported,
"after thorough analysis, we've concluded they have some cool stuff there."
You get the idea. The point of all of this isn't to recommend any particular
stocks in the technology sector. You can only determine what's right for
your portfolio by consulting a certified financial planner or dart board.
The point is to try to ground the negative image that companies acquire when
their figureheads become a little too prosperous. Bill Gates is just one of
more than three million shareholders. Many of the others are just average
people who get up, go to work, then come home and watch Regis. When Gates
prospers, so do more than three million of these folk.
Yes, it's true that sometimes business is hardball; and, yes, we have a long
way to go before we're a functioning altruistic utopia. But that's
capitalism, baby, and it's groovy, yeah!