Washington Babylon — April 21, 2009, 12:07 pm
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The global economic crisis has hit home for Tom Friedman. When the New York Times columnist married heiress Ann Bucksbaum in 1978, he joined one of America’s richest families: The Bucksbaums founded General Growth Properties, the shopping mall giant worth an estimated $4 billion just two years ago…
But their retirement fund probably just got smaller. In one of the largest real estate failures ever, GGP filed for Chapter 11 last week, and the Bucksbaum family fortune is now down to a measly $25 million.
As reported in the Harper’s Index last February:
Estimated total value in December 2007 of the family fortune of Thomas Friedman’s wife: $3,500,000,000
Percentage change in the value of that fortune since then: –97
More from Ken Silverstein:
Commentary — July 25, 2012, 2:20 pm
Washington Babylon — September 29, 2010, 11:37 am
Ratio of the number of cicada eggs per square mile of southern New Jersey to the number of stars in the Milky Way:
Jeffrey Lockwood, University of Wyoming (Laramie)/American Museum of Natural History (N.Y.C.)
A Singaporean company unveiled Kissenger, a pair of plastic lips mounted on a large plastic egg, which transmits real-time interactive kisses to a distant lover. “I am not interested in the sexual uses for it,” said the device’s inventor. “We’ve taken several steps to minimize the creepiness.”
The practice of sexualized eyeball licking was causing conjunctivitis in Japanese sixth graders.
