Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast takes a look at the Forbes 400 list, which some billionaires have taken to aggressive steps to maintain their position on the list.
Grove writes, “Veteran financial journalist Luisa Kroll, who co-edits the Forbes 400 rankings of the richest people in the United States, has stopped taking calls from an especially unpleasant plutocrat.
“‘These people are used to getting their way—they don’t like being told no,’ Kroll told The Daily Beast about the unnamed tycoon, one of a handful of wealthy folks who feel so bitterly underappreciated by Forbes that they have personally lobbied the magazine—Donald Trump prominent among them—for higher and occasionally fictitious valuations.
“‘Quite frankly, there was one billionaire who became so abusive that I now have one of my deputy editors dealing with that person,’ Kroll said. “I’ve been screamed at—literally screamed at, like, spewing! You literally hold the phone away from your ear… That person believed to the bottom of his soul that his assets were worth more than we set.’
“Once again this week, in a decades-old rite of autumn, the 102-year-old magazine will burnish—or bruise—hundreds of massive egos, indulge a collective impulse for financial voyeurism, and possibly even provoke a bit of class resentment by publishing its annual Forbes 400.”
Read more here.
