The High-Beta Rich: How the Manic Wealthy Will Take Us to the Next Boom, Bubble, and Bust

The rich are not only getting richer; they are becoming more dangerous. Beginning in the early 1980s, the top 1% pulled away from the rest of the economy to become its most unstable force. An elite who had once been the flat line on American income charts—models of financial propriety—set off on a wild ride of booms and busts. Not only do they control a large share of wealth, their vulnerability to stock-market booms and busts reverberates through the consumer economy, financial markets, communities, employment, and government finances. Robert Frank provides the big-picture view of high-beta wealth, and his vivid storytelling takes you inside mortgaged mansions, blown-up balance sheets, repossessed Bentleys and Gulfstreams, and wrecked lives and relationships: - How a couple frittered away a fortune trying to build America’s biggest house—a 90,000-square-foot palace with a 6,000-square-foot master suite and a rotating bed—only to be forced to sell because “we really need the money.” - Repo men who now scour the wares of the wealthy, reclaiming private jets, helicopters, yachts, and racehorses—the shiny remnants of a decade of conspicuous consumption financed with debt, asset bubbles, liquidity events, and soaring stock prices. - How “big money ruins everything” for communities such as Aspen, Colorado, where over-reliance on the rich has created a velvet-rope, A-list social scene and crises in employment, housing, and tax revenue. - Why California’s worst budget crisis in history owes much to the volatility of the state’s tech tycoons. - The bitter divorce of a Forbes 400 couple, the firing of their enormous household staff, and how one former spouse discovered the pleasures of Marshalls, filling your own gas tank, and flying commercial. Robert Frank’s analysis shows that the rise of high-beta wealth is not just a “rich” problem. High-beta wealth has national consequences: America’s dependence on the rich plus their volatility equals a more volatile America. Cycles of wealth are faster and more extreme. The rich are a new Potemkin plutocracy, and the lessons and consequences are laid bare in this engrossing book. high-beta rich (hi-be-ta rich): 1) a newly identified personality type among America’s upper class prone to wild wealth swings. 2) the winners (and occasional losers) in an economy built on financial markets, asset bubbles, and deals. 3) derived from the Wall Street term “high-beta,” meaning highly volatile or prone to booms and busts. 4) an elite capable of wreaking havoc on communities, jobs, government finances, and the consumer economy. 5) a new Potemkin plutocracy that hides a mountain of debt behind the image of success—one crisis away from losing their mansions, private jets, and yachts.