Jeff Bezos is almost a double centi-billionaire; Bulgaria’s epic anti-corruption protests

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HEADS I WIN, TAILS I ALSO WIN

I often think the best way to approach important and emotion-heavy events is to put money on the side I want to lose, so I win either way. If Wales beats England, I’m happy; if England beats Wales, at least I’m in the money. In the days after the U.S. election, I was interested to see that, slightly improbably, the tech billionaires appear to have created a financial system that works in the same way.

Take Jeff Bezos: he was already the richest man in the world before the election, but he ended last week a cool $13.9 billion richer, with his personal net worth estimated by Forbes at $193.4 billion (item: do we need a new word for someone who owns $200 billion? Centi-billionaire seems so two years ago, all of a sudden). Mark Zuckerberg did well too, with a gain of $11 billion, putting him firmly into centi-billionaire territory; as did Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Tesla’s Elon Musk, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

So, how did they arrange this “heads, I win; tails, I win” strategy? Although Joe Biden took the White House, it looks like the Republicans may hang onto the Senate. House Democrats had been pushing hard for more regulatory oversight of the tech giants, and divided government makes that less likely.