Which means that if, on his way into the office, should he see or drop a 1000 bill on the ground, it's just not worth his time to bend over and pick it up. He would make more just heading off to work.

assuming about 4 seconds to bend down and pocket the bill. Of course he can afford to hire people to follow him and pick up any 1000 bills he may drop. Not that he would, fortunately he doesn't quite think of his wealth or time this way

In 1998 he netted some 45 Billion, meaning that at the rate he's went, if he saw a 10,000 bill, he would have been just as well to pass it by. (They do exist, but he won't see one until he buys the U.S. treasury -- they are not circulated. Salmon Chase, former secretary of the treasury and chief justice, is on it.) If it's a pile of cash he has to count, it's even worse. At 3,700 per second in

in 98, they would have to be mythical five-thousand-dollar Bills -- and he would need to have a quick hand -- to avoid him losing the money in wasted time while he's counting them. Counting 1,000 bills would be very unprofitable.

That 45B in 12 months is an astounding rate at which to make money. That's higher than the entire gross domestic products of Chile and Egypt, and he's done twice as well as Guatemala, 4 times better than all of Sri Lanka or the Dominican Republic, 6 times better than Costa Rica, El Salvador or Panama, 8 times better than everybody in Brunei, including the Sultan, and 23 times better than Bermuda

Nobody -- even G.M, Exxon, Ford, IBM and Intel combined -- has earned what Bill's did in 98 by holding onto that MSFT stock. His profit/month is more than all the sales of Lockheed Martin, J.C. Penny, UPS or Intel, and all but 25 of the largest companies on last year's Fortune 500. In fact, in 1998, his stock has gone up around three times Microsoft's entire sales -- not just profits -- for 1996.

Evan Marcus, a Systems Engineer from Fair Lawn, New Jersey who maintains a Bill Gates Net Worth Page on his web site, notes that Bill could buy every single major league team in Baseball, Football, Basketball and Hockey for only about 35 of his net worth -- plenty left over to buy a European sport.

He's also fascinated by how much much all this money would be if put into dollar bills. Laid end to end, the Bills would stretch 3.8 million miles -- to the moon and back over 8 times. They could paper over all of Manhatten 7 times, or be stacked 2,690 miles high -- watch out for satellites. They would weigh 40,000 tons -- 100 times the weight of one of those 747s he bought above.

long as u realise microsofts value has crashed the past five years because they have missed the biggest tech industries, and vista flopped. apple smashed their face in with the ipod, google with search. ballmer is going to get the boot