[Mr. Mojo]

Kamprad, known for frugal habits such as flying economy class

Iow, a nutcase.

[dirtboy]

Great. The two richest men in the world make crappy furniture and buggy software.

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[A CA Guy]

Soon they will all be worth far less than: .

The Franken decade is long gone, next the Hung decade is upon us like a bowling ball landing on your foot. In short order he will overwhelm the list as the richest man in the world by way of pure...talent?

[ValerieUSA]

He is so rich because he lives in Switzerland, not Sweden, where nearly everything would have been confiscated in taxes.

[freethistle]

uh, if Gates lost his position as richest man because of the slide in the dollar, where does that put the rest of us Americans versus the rest of the world?

[SamAdams76]

That is too bad about Bill Gates. Microsoft makes excellent software and I have never been disappointed with a Microsoft product. I even like their hardware, such as their mouses and keyboards. Hopefully they will come out with an MP3 player and a beer soon.

Yes, Microsoft branded beer. It's something I have been waiting on for a long time. Even if I have to call some "800" number everytime I open a bottle, I'm sure that it will be worth it.

Here's hoping that Bill Gates gets back to the top of the heap soon.

[My Dog Likes Me]

We should take up a collection for Bill Gates to restore him to number one status.

Poor guy. The man is going hungry, people!

[FreedomFlynnie]

After a couple minutes thinking about this article, I can't seem to reach the conclusion that the dollar's decline could have "caused" Gates to lose the #1 spot. My understanding is that his Microsoft stock makes up the vast majority of his wealth, and the amount he has times its current share price essentially determine the significant figures of his net worth.

MSFT's price is given in dollars, but it's presumably worth the same "value" in any currency. In other words, if the dollar fell against a world currency basket, MSFT would rise accordingly so that the proceeds of selling one share could still purchase the same world goods basket (the most obvious mechanism to me is foreigners purchasing the newly discounted shares and increasing quantity demanded until the original goods-denominated price is restored; there are probably others). If this appreciation doesn't occur, the value of MSFT has declined due to some factor unrelated to the currency movement.

If the above analysis weren't the case, then MSFT would still sell for the same amount of foreign currency. Bill Gates could just state that his net worth was measured in whatever foreign currency he wanted and be back on top by essentially ignoring the exchange rate movement in his wealth calculation.

I'm not saying that Gates didn't get knocked out of the top spot, just that if he did it was because MSFT shares didn't rise to compensate for the declining dollar (or, conversely, that IKEA shares didn't decline to compensate for the appreciation in foreign currency). Someone prove me wrong :-p

Also, if anyone maintains an economics pinglist, I'd love to be on it. Thanks.

[AFreeBird]

Watch out Micro$oft users; your fee'$$ are about to go up.