Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Big Bummer for Tom Friedman

Tom Friedman, he of Lexuses, olive trees, the flat earth, "suck on this," the Friedman unit, and lately, a proselytizer for a Green-driven economic utopia, seems to have fallen on hard times - at least to the extent that times can be hard for someone with a plum writing job for The New York Times and who collects a reported $50,000 per speaking engagement.

Tom's wife is apparently heiress to General Growth Properties, a Real Estate Investment Trust and the nation's second largest owner of shopping malls. General Growth has seen its market value plunge more than 97%, reducing the Friedman family fortune from $3.5 billion in December 2007 to its present $25 million. [Source: Harper's Magazine Index, February 2009]

Alas.

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