Lately I’ve been thinking about money. Mostly the fact that I don’t have it. To me this is a great injustice. I’m ept (as opposed to inept). I’m smart. I work hard. I don’t punch the clock or keep regular hours, but I don’t have days off, either. Why am I not rich? How is it that a lot of people who can’t compose a proper sentence make way, way more money than I do?
To try and answer my questions I bought a copy of the annual Fortune 500, the list of the largest corporations in America. Fortune magazine is read by people who work seriously at getting rich. This group includes actual rich people, which I will define for my purposes as people with annual incomes in eight digits or more. Perhaps this magazine contained the secrets of the big-bucks tribe. At the very least I expected that after reading it, I would be able to sit through coffee with my high school friends and hear the words “hedge funds” without thinking of shrubbery.
Along with the annual 500 listing, the magazine contained essays by various pundits explaining where business went in 2000, and predicting where it will go in 2001. It appears that everyone in the United States is afraid that a recession is coming. They conceal their fears with euphemisms like “slowdown,” “a sharp adjustment,” and “a realignment to more sustainable and moderate growth levels.” In short, a recession. It seems to me that big-business America has grown so accustomed to making super-hysterical sums of money that when the amounts dip to a merely hysterical level, panic ensues. This is interesting. In a few pages, I have learned that in order to be rich, one must be both a risk-taker and a chicken.
Due to the fear of a coming recession, companies have been laying off workers and finding ways to decrease spending. In my very limited understanding, that’s exactly what would cause a recession. If no one is spending money, then no one is making money. Everyone is looking to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, widely acknowledged as the architect of the recent economic boom, for salvation. I read somewhere that Alan Greenspan is a disciple of the philosopher/writer Ayn Rand. A-ha! There lies the difference between an economic genius and me. Mr. Greenspan read Ayn Rand and developed an economic philosophy. I read The Fountainhead and thought it was hilarious. Drat, if I hadn’t enrolled in those literary criticism courses I might’ve been rich by now.
As I read the articles I was struck by the Fortune writers’ frequent attempts at hipness. Is this an editorial policy? I am inclined to attribute this trend towards cuteness to the fact that Fortune is part of the Time-Warner group, which was acquired by America Online. Which makes Fortune, like CNN, an AOL content provider.
In one article, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley is quoted as saying that companies have spent more on information technology than they can recoup in productivity. Everybody thought that advances in IT were driving productivity growth. However, economists now fear that it was not IT itself which induced the gains, but spending on IT. The very act of spending on computers, routers and software boosts the economy. Therefore when CEOs look at what they’ve gained from spending all that money on technology, they will not be happy. As the writer puts it: “In the rush to get wired to the Internet, corporate America overdosed on technology and now must check in to the business equivalent of the Betty Ford clinic.” Cute.
A sidebar on hot tech personalities notes that Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has “faced down more villains than Austin Powers.” The writer goes on to demonstrate his knowledge of pop-culture by stretching the Austin Powers reference to an excruciating degree. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s wealth “disappeared faster than an exploding Fembot.” Gates did not have to undergo “the cryogenic freezing process.” He might soon have “a sidekick named Felicity Shagwell.” Very cute. Somebody throw boiling water at that writer: he thinks he’s so cool, he may get hypothermia. I must admit, though, that comparing Bill Gates to Austin Powers makes sense. Austin Powers’ creator Mike Myers had been accused of ripping off the Dr. Evil character from fellow Saturday Night Live regular Dana Carvey’s impression of their producer, Lorne Michaels.