About every two months, some exposure-hungry company releases a list of the richest people in the world. This grew so boring (because Bill Gates was always number one) that one firm even produced the "richest men under 40" - or something like that - just to oust Bill and get some more column inches.

Well, we secretly hoped everyone had given up on this tedious notion, but no. Forbes has produced - guess what - a list of the richest Americans (not even international this time).

The list basically emphasises the rich are getting richer. This is our homage to the lame list idea:

The world's top three poorest men

• 
  
• Jed Matthews: Jed is currently $22.4 million in debt. Never the sharpest tool in the box, he came to the dotcom share market a little late and consistently managed to buy Internet shares at their peak before they then slumped when everyone realised all they possessed as assets were forty Internet freaks and around twenty pages of HTML code. Jed used the fortune given to him by his buffalo-rearing father as collateral but managed to lose 10 times that in one particularly bad afternoon when he was feeling a little tired.
  
• Chuck Johnson: Chuck spent too much time reading books and not enough watching the TV. Subsequently, the movie financier came to the conclusion that people were crying out for films that contained characters, plots and dialogue. He insisted on hiring directors that knew about filming (not one had directed a TV commercial or slept with the right person) and paid for actors that were able to give realistic performances of the people they were pretending to be. It is legend that every leading lady in his productions possessed natural breasts. The upshot of this film madness was a gaping hole of $19.6 million.
  
• Buck Rogers: This unfortunate astronaut was frozen in space and discovered several centuries later. He was a little shaken but quickly mastered spacecraft and helped saved the world through his daring antics and tight pants. Once he had made the human race safe once more, he spent another two years trying to get in his co-star's pants but failed. Unfortunately for Buck, a score of IRS men had survived and propagated in an underground bunker. When they were discovered four years later they quickly found out Buck's identity, checked their files and found he hadn't declared a Mars bar he'd had in 1985. With the interest accrued, Buck's debt will come to $16.7 million.
  

Incidentally, the world's poorest man who has never had any interest in capitalism is Oonabaji Kipkembunja of Ethopia. Oonabaji sold his family into slavery into order to set up a lettuce factory. However, when he bought a goat for companionship, it devoured his crop of three lettuces on 23 March this year, late at night. Mr Kipkembunja was then forced into devouring the goat. His possessions now stretch to two strips of goat meat and a shiny stone shaped like a carrot (although he doesn't know that, having never seen a carrot).

If you really must know who's got the wonga:

• 
  
• 1. Bill Gates - $63 billion - Microsoft
  
• 2. Larry Ellison - $58 billion - Oracle
  
• 3. Paul Allen - $36 billion - Microsoft
  
• 5. Gordon E Moore - $26 billion - Intel
  
• 7. Steve Ballmer - $17 billion - Microsoft
  
• 13. Michael Dell - $16 billion - Dell
  
• 24. Sanjiv Sidhu - $9.8 billion - i2
  
• 26. William Hewlett - $9 billion - HP
  
• 37. David Filo - $6.5 billion - Yahoo!
  
• 38. Jerry Yang - $6.4 billion - Yahoo!
  
• 40. John Morgridge - $5.6 billion - Cisco
  
• 48. Jeff Bezos - $4.7 billion - Amazon

  ®

  Related Link

  Forbes Rich List