100 richest people: Meet the 10 richest Americans

The 100 richest people in the world gained $241 billion in net worth last year, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. Americans dominated the list, occupying five of the top 10 spots. This countdown of the top 10 wealthiest Americans features a casino mogul, software tycoons, and a lot of Wal-Mart money. 

2. Warren Buffett

Shuji Kajiyama/AP/File
In this 2011 file photo, Warren Buffett attends the opening ceremony of a plant at the headquarters of Tungaloy Corp. in Iwaki city, in northern Japan.

Net worth: $50.2 billion

Wealth source: Berkshire Hathaway

Residence: Omaha, Neb.

World Rank: 4th

Mr. Buffett is widely considered the best investor of the past century. His investment firm Berkshire Hathaway operates a broad range of businesses, including Geico insurance and MidAmerican Energy. It also owns over $1 billion in Coca-Cola stock, as well as shares of Procter & Gamble and American Express.

Buffett has pledged to give away nearly all of his wealth to charitable causes, and is lately famous for being an outspoken advocate of higher tax rates for wealthy Americans. 

9 of 10

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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