No Man Is an Island No Matter How Rich He Is

The Century Foundation recently held a conference titled "Billionaires and Their Impact" to examine, well, billionaires. Seems like we got a lot more of them than we used to.

This year Forbes magazine listed 1,125 billionaires in the world, compared to 946 in 2007—and a measly 140 billionaires in 1986, the first year of the publication's ranking.

They're multiplying, but none of them are you so it might be a good idea to find out what they plan to do with the planet, seeing as how they own it - or think they do. You can see a bunch of videos of the conference here, including my recommendation: my buddy David Cay Johnston of the NYT talking about how billionaires who don't think they owe nobody nothin' actually owe a lot of people a lot, people without whom they would still be sweeping floors at the Hardie's.

And yes, that includes - especially includes - Senor Bill G.

(Videos are in QuickTime, which I don't know hot to post here or I'd post a couple. There's a bunch of them and some of them are...surprising.)