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Losing Billions Of Dollars In A Single Day Is Hard To Fathom For Anybody

(Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

David Hookstead Sports And Entertainment Editor
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Yesterday, multiple billionaires took massive hits to their net worths after the stock market took a big hit yesterday.

NBC news reporter Scott Budman tweeted the following on several billionaires:

Had a rough day? Mark Zuckerberg lost $3.6 billion today. Jeff Bezos lost $3.2 billion. Google’s founders lost $2.3 billion, each. Bill Gates lost $2.2 billion. (Source: Bloomberg)

I can’t imagine waking up one morning and having billions of dollars gone. It’s not like a rough day at the casino when you might lose a few hundred or a grand. That sucks, but you move on pretty quickly. Losing billions? How does a person even react to that. I understand they’re all still billionaires, but it’s mind-boggling to even envision.

For example, I was once with somebody when they were informed they’d lost $300,000. The man chuckled, shrugged his shoulders, said he’d get it back and went back to what he was working on. I thought that kind of reaction was insane. I would be losing my mind if somebody told me that I had just lost more than a quarter of a million dollars. Now imagine being told you’ve lost billions. How does a person even react to that? I would go crazy if I woke up one morning and had lost the equivalent of an entire pro sports league’s contracts.

I thought the dude who lost $300,000 was out of his mind for laughing about it, and not even slowing down to take a moment to care. That’s pennies compared to losing billions. It just makes no sense to me at all, but maybe that’s why these guys are billionaires and I’m not.

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