Forbes

The old saw has it that there are two types of writers: those who work to please themselves, and those who seek the biggest possible audience. There’s a third type, though: those who write to make a difference. And Forbes is loaded with them. Senior Writer Emily Baker-White epitomizes what it means to translate good journalism into impact at scale. After she revealed TikTok’s plans to allay the fears of U.S. regulators about data captured by the Chinese parent company last year, Baker-White emerged as a beacon, as TikTok insiders shared increasingly alarming information about the social video giant. “Sometimes stories find you,” she says, as one revelation led to another, and then another, capped by the most surreal scoop ever: Baker-White reported that TikTok executives had used the tracking capabilities…

Bringing up the subject of a gold standard is strictly verboten in the economics profession and among financial policymakers. It’s long past time to break this taboo. A gold-based monetary system would have prevented our present woes, not to mention this century’s previous economic and banking disasters. Talk about cancel culture! For years the gold standard, under which the United States successfully operated from the time of George Washington to the early 1970s, has been the great unmentionable in government and academic circles, where even discussion of the topic is derisively dismissed. Inflation never occurs with a gold standard. Under one we’d have been spared the calamity of the 2008-09 financial crisis, the subsequent unprecedented suppression of interest rates and the binge of money printing before and during the pandemic, all of…

Boulud Sud 20 West 64th St. (Tel.: 212-595-1313) This is a snazzy place to have dinner before heading over to Lincoln Center. To accommodate those doing that, there’s a special $75 prix fixe menu with many options that will get you across the street in plenty of time. Appetizers include a soup, a salad and two seafood selections (each with a supplemental charge). The Italian chicory salad gets the palate ready for a perfectly seared Mediterranean sea bass or a Snake River Farms Wagyu beef bavette ($20 supplement). The coconut rice pudding is scrumptious. Osteria Delbianco 22 East 49th St. (Tel.: 212-838-5972) This pleasant, smallish Midtown Italian offers straightforward classics at only moderately high prices. The pastas are made in house daily, and you can’t go wrong with either the spaghetti al pomodoro or the…

Every day is like a vacation for Jimmy Buffett. When Forbes met up with the singer-songwriter in December 2022, he was just back from the Bahamas. He’d soon jet off to St. Barts, the Caribbean paradise where he has had a home for 30 years. “We’ve seen all kinds of fun come and go on that little rock,” Buffett says. His workdays might as well be leisure time, too. Buffett, 76, has built a career—and a ten-figure fortune—distilling carefree island vibes into hit songs, merchandise, a chain of restaurants, resorts, even gated communities. Those five decades in the sun have paid off: Forbes estimates Buffett’s current net worth to be $1 billion. (He declined to comment on his fortune.) The party started in the early 1970s, when Buffett landed in Key West,…

Yoko Ono Debut 1982, $150 million Nearly two years after John Lennon was murdered, Ono appeared on The Forbes 400. Her late husband’s portion of the Beatles’ music royalties, which she inherited, made up the bulk of her $150 million fortune. She also owned 250 cows in upstate New York, worth some $7.5 million, which came with lucrative tax benefits. Bob Hope Debut 1982, $280 million “If my estate is worth over $50 million, I’ll kick your ass,” Hope threatened in 1983 after appearing on The Forbes 400 with a $200 million net worth. Challenge accepted: Forbes hired an appraiser to estimate the biggest source of his wealth, his vast California real estate holdings. Turns out the funnyman was wrong—but so were we. His fortune, which also included some RCA stock and minor oil interests…

In October 2021, Donald Trump was eager for revenge. Nine months earlier he had been banned from Twitter, depriving him of his primary means of communicating with his followers. His solution? Build his own Twitter, dubbed Truth Social. As soon as he announced the plan, supporters piled into Truth Social’s special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Shares shot up from $10 to $175 in two days, implying that the business was worth $22 billion, his interest amounting to $19 billion. The hype never lined up with reality. In December 2021, a group of big-money investors promised to inject $1 billion in cash into the venture—but only if they got a sweetheart deal. Shares were trading for $45 by then, but the new investors were guaranteed to profit as long as they stayed…