At these Christmas parties we want to give gifts regardless of whether we are very rich or are affected by the blows of the pandemic, inflation and the interest rates that the Federal Reserve bank continues to raise with the goal of preventing us from having more Debts that we can pay.
And even if you don’t believe it, dear reader, the problem is general, because being rich or a billionaire also has its challenges. For example, look at what just happened to the South African tycoon, Elon Musk, who according to Forbes magazine is no longer the richest person in the world.
That place has just been snatched away by the French art investor and magnate, Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault; And in case his name doesn’t ring a bell, he is nothing more and nothing less than the founding president of the company Louis Vuitton . During the last 30 years he amassed a great fortune designing and selling luxury goods; ranging from perfumes and cosmetics to famous handbags, which face problems because they are copied and sold cheaper, damaging their reputation as a high-class brand.
Musk, who also owns the rocket company SpaceX, dropped to second place on the rich list, famous and powerful, for the reduction in more than half of the value on Wall Street of the shares of the electric car manufacturer Tesla, up to $30 dollars in the stock market values.
Economic analysts attribute this fall to the recent purchase that Musk made of Twitter, in April of this 188. With his multimillion-dollar investment, he was left with one of the most popular social networks among the followers of “ influencers ” or opinion generators on the internet. Only Musk reports 30 millions of followers, and this daring move is seen as a risk for the automotive company, since to keep the social network, Musk had to sell $ 30 billion in Tesla shares.
According to Forbes, Musk’s fortune dropped to about $ 177 billion dollars, while Arnault has more than $188 billion, but both have their own messes to deal with.
And given these astronomical figures, dear reader, don’t worry if you don’t have much money for the Christmas shopping, since, while they battle to maintain their empires, all we Hispanics want for this Christmas is for Congress to find an immigration reform that allows millions of people to pay their taxes with Uncle Sam and have a little money to buy gifts, good, beautiful and cheap, even if they are not Louis Vuitton.
S ofía Villa is the author and writes this column in her personal capacity. Her opinions do not represent Televisa-Univision Inc. where she works as Writer / Producer