Since the early 2000's, Apple has been a leader in the consumer electronics and media sales market with the introduction of the iPod and iTunes music store. Since then, they have been a big indicator of the NASDAQ; in essence, they're a man amongst boys in the top-tier tech stocks listed on the NASDAQ. In 2013, they managed to rake in $171 billion, continuing their decade-long pattern of increasing sales and net income. This demonstrates the talent of Apple's management by increasing profits directly with their revenue.
To put things into perspective, in 2011, Apple managed to out preform Microsoft ($65 billion to $62 million). Microsoft was known to be basically a monopoly for a very long time, and the fact that Apple was able to pass them in total annual revenue is a monumental accomplishment on Apples part. It seems as if Apple will only keep getting bigger, better, and stronger.
This blog site is all about money, so how's this for an interesting money fact to cap it all off; Apple has more money on hand than the United States treasury has to spend. Then again, that's not really a shocker!
By the time you're done reading this sentence, Bill Gates will have made about $2,000. If he were to drop a hundred dollar bill on the ground, it is literally not worth his time to pick it up. His annual salary is [approximately] $3,710,000,000. To break that down, that's about $117.56 earned per second; it's almost unreal. The Bugatti Veyron is among the most extravagant and dreamed of luxury items in the world, and it usually stays a dream because of it's hefty price tag of around $2.5 million. For Bill Gates however, it would only take him about 6 hours to save up for one.
According to Evan Marcus, a man who maintains a Bill Gates net worth page, Bill Gates could buy every major league team in Baseball, Football, Basketball, and Hockey for only about 30% of his net worth - plenty left over to buy a European sport. The crazy thing is, he wasn't born into the super wealthy lifestyle.
On a different note, if Gates were to donate every bit of his wealth to our national debt, it would only alleviate .45% of it; that's barely scratching the surface. It's nice to put things into perspective.
In today's capitalist America, it's all about innovation, opportunity, and money. A big trend thats flourished in the last 5 years is phone and tablet applications. From Angry Birds to Candy Crush, and Flappy Bird to Snapchat, applications are the big thing. If you can create a good app, you could be making more money than you could ever imagine. Angry Birds at one point was probably the most popular mobile game on the market, pulling in around $6,000 a day, or about $2,190,000 a year, but recently, the king of the app market is, well, King. Their star game Candy Crush rakes in around $875,000 per day! Thats about $319,375,000 annually! All this money is made off of a little mobile application that only requires a computer and some simple coding, but all this simplicity can be turned into millions. A great example of simple is Dong Nguyen's Flappy Bird app. This app took modern day interests and put an old fashion spin on things, reverting it back to the graphics of the old Mario games.The only thing you do in Flappy Bird is tap the screen and get a little yellow bird through a series of pipes, and this made Nguyen over $50,000 a day. So, if you ever have a good application idea, make it happen! It could be worth more than you think.
The definition of 'Power' is "the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events." Basically, to have power means having the ability to influence people. Janet Yellen is the successor of Ben Bernanke as the, now, 15th Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for the United States of America. Being the Chairman of the Federal Reserve means Yellen is the active executive officer of the central banking system of America, giving her the power to not set the Federal Fund Rates, but rather steer the Fed towards a consensus. Being able to do said prior, she's in control of inflation, money supply, and ultimately, the economy of the most powerful country in the world.
Throughout the 2008 financial crisis in the United States - amplified by Washington's gridlock - the central banking system took on the job of re-exhilerating the economy through superfluous amounts of money in the form of asset buying. Ever since the central banking system took on this arduous task, they've been in control of America's economy for many years now, meaning whoever is in charge of the Federal banking system is in control of the country's money, and since money makes the world go round, Janet Yellen is arguably the most powerful person in the world.
