Elon, S.B.F. & the Closing of the Billionaire Mind

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Welcome back to Dry Powder. I’m Bill Cohan.

The American infatuation with the rich, and the exceedingly rich, is part of our collective psyche. But the billionaires of today—at least those that are making the headlines—are not quite like the billionaires of yore. In this issue, a look at how our inclination to mythologize the lives of people like Elon Musk, or Sam Bankman-Fried, has blinded us to a more fundamental truth…

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Elon, Bankman-Fried & the Closing of the Billionaire Mind

Elon, S.B.F. & the Closing of the Billionaire Mind

Remember a time when our Wall Street heroes were good at business?

WILLIAM D. COHAN

We do love our rich folks in America, that’s for sure. Back in the day, it was men like J.P. Morgan and Henry Villard, the money men who backed Thomas Edison, and John D. Rockefeller, who for a time controlled the oil patch and was our first billionaire. More recently, our infatuation has landed on such businessmen as Jack Welch and Larry Page and Sergey Brin. We can also throw into the mix the Microsoft coaching tree, including Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, the late Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer.

Ah, and then there were the really good old days, back in the ’80s and ’90s, when the deal guys like Felix Rohatyn and Bruce Wasserstein would bring together C.E.O.s in their Fifth Avenue apartments or at...

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