According to Forbes’ latest billionaire list, Michael Bloomberg — mayor, media maven, soda hater — is worth $27 billion. That’s an increase from 2012, when he was worth a pathetic $22 billion.

Despite all that money, Bloomberg only ranks as the 13th wealthiest person in the world. The number one spot is held down by Carlos Slim and family, with $73 billion. He is followed by Bill Gates ($67 billion), Amancio Ortega ($57), and Warren Buffett ($53.5).

For the full list of people with way more money than all of us combined, click through. Ladies, we suggest you don’t even bother. Out of the 1,426 total people on the list, only 138 of them are women.

The economy is still in the crapper, so why don’t we celebrate that by looking at Forbes’ list of the 400 richest people in the nation? As usual, pretty much everyone on the list is white. If that surprises you, please read the following very carefully: White people own everything. It’s not fair, but it’s true.

Bill Gates leads the pack this year with a total net worth of $66 billion, followed by Warren Buffett ($46 billion) and Larry Ellison ($41 billion).

As for New York media moguls, our Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, comes in at a respectable 10th, with $25 billion. Rupert Murdoch is tied for 36th with Mark Zuckerberg, at $9.4 billion. We’re pretty sure that makes them best friends, but we’re still waiting on confirmation of that.

A few others: Samuel Newhouse comes in at 46 with $7.4 billion; Donald Newhouse ranks 51st, with $6.6 billion; and Mort Zuckerman ranks 190th, with $2.4 billion.

For the full list, click through.

It was SRO at Michael’s today. The dining room was so jam packed every sqaure inch was occupied by a mogul (Mel Karmazin!), media heavyweight (Tom Brokaw, Jon Meacham, Jeff Zucker), or social swan (divorcee of the moment, Mercedes Bass who moved to the Garden Room with pal Lynn Nesbitt when the decibel level and fabulousness of it all got to be too much).  Just a thought: if you’re looking for a quiet, out of the way lunch spot, you might want to consider going somewhere else on Wednesday.

I was joined today by Forbes‘ new editor, Randall Lane. In his new position, Randall is presiding over familiar territory to him: the lives of the ridiculously rich and ambitious. In a previous life, he was the editor of Trader Monthly which chronicled the age of excess of the Wall Streeter of days gone by.  That experience later provided plenty of fodder for his book, The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade When Wall Street Went Insane. In the interim, he’s been an editor at large for Newsweek and written for The Daily Beast. Having worked with him years ago when he was the editor in chief on the startup Justice, which covered the hot trials and legal issues of the day, I was thrilled when I heard he’d gotten the top job at Forbes back in September.

Randall first worked at Forbes fresh out of college in the nineties and spent six years “chasing rich people” and working on the franchise’s venerated power lists which required (and still do) hundreds of hours of research and manpower. “In some ways, it feels like I never left,” he tells me.

Since taking the helm, Randall has been on a mission to make the book more visually exciting with interesting photography (the arresting cover image of Bill Gates in the “World’s 70 Most Powerful People” issue is a winner), fresh design elements courtesy of the Brooklyn-based shop Athletics, a livelier front of book section and more in-depth profiles on people the Forbes reader wants to know about.  Exhibit A: The cover story in the November 7 issue on Dropbox’s Drew Houston, the 28 year-old mogul who turned down Steve Jobs and is now worth $600 million which drew one million hits on Forbes.com.

Read more

Maya Draisin has been with technology magazine Wired for seven years. Draisin has been promoted to associate publisher, marketing, and with it comes a move from San Francisco to New York.

Draisin previously served as the promotions director, special projects director, and most recently the brand & strategy director.

She founded tent pole extensions like Wired’s Business Conference “Disruptive by Design,” which will kick off its third year with a keynote from Bill Gates. In her new role, Maya will pursue and oversee new business and revenue opportunities for Wired while ensuring that all extensions reflect the publication’s ethos and aesthetic.

Read more

National Public Media, the corporate sponsorship firm for NPR, PBS and Boston-based WGBH, named Stephen Moss its president and chief executive officer yesterday.

It’s a perfect time to announce the change, as NPR is coming off its pledge week and CEO Vivian Schiller just last week proclaimed that her organization had the tools to survive the recession that’s bogged down the media industry.

Moss, a former technology executive with a background in print media, joins NPM from the web technology company Evri, where he served as vice president of business development. Prior to that, Moss worked for Microsoft as VP of sales, and general manager of Bill Gates-owned Corbis. While there, he helped launch the MSN video service. Moss also previously worked as CEO of Internet ad network DoubleClick Media.

Moss started his career in advertising sales at McGraw-Hill‘s magazine publishing division, and he went on to lead sales divisions for Thompson Financial‘s American Banker and BusinessWeek in Asia. He also worked on the agency side at Seavex Limited, working with clients like BusinessWeek and CNN.

Read more

It’s back off-again. Over the week-end Yahoo rejected Carl Icahn and Microsoft‘s “take it or leave it” proposal, which required Yahoo to sell its search business to Microsoft, throw out its board and management, and hand control of the rest of the company to Carl Icahn. Not surprisingly even the analysts and shareholders who had previously criticized Yahoo for letting takeover talks with Microsoft collapse earlier this year referred to the “stupid” offer as a stunt. But don’t despair, all is not lost! Yahoo chairman/CEO Roy Bostock says the company is more than happy to consider a sale and has “emphatically” told Ballmer that Yahoo would be “willing to sell to Microsoft at $33 a share or to negotiate a search deal after the proxy fight.”

Meanwhile over at AdAge Simon Dumenco says the whole “on-again, off-again, full-frontal, roundabout, all-or-nothing, piecemeal” relationship is bad for Microsoft’s image and that this entire deal (or non-deal) is evidence that Microsoft head Steve Ballmer is running “amok” now that Bill Gates has effectively left the building. But that doesn’t mean we want all this “pouncing and striking” and “ducking and weaving” to end! Oh no, we have to agree with Dumenco that as far as media “dramedies” go it’s too much fun. The only thing missing now is some Rupe.

The wait is almost over: The iPhone arrives at 6PM tomorrow. The reviews are already rolling in. Across the board, experts complain about AT&T’s service, but enjoy the phone and agree it’s a huge advance. Whether the iPhone is part of Steve Jobs‘ diabolical scheme to light Bill Gates on fire is still up for debate.

Our favorites:

• A brilliant video review from the NYT‘s David Pogue.
  
• The WSJ‘s Walt Mossberg‘s take (and requisite video).
  
• A countdown from our own Mobile Media News blog.
  
• Newsweek‘s Steven Levy weighs in.

• The USAT has its own opinions.

RELATED:

Last night at the All Things Digital Conference in Carlsbad, California, an impossibly historic meeting for tech nerds took place: Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, together on one stage. (It was sorta like a meeting between Luke Skywalker and Captain Kirk, for you nerds of another galaxy).

The event, of course, was sold out, but you can watch all of it here.

Said Gates: “We’ve kept our marriage secret for over a decade now.”

(Funny, that’s exactly the type of titillating discussion Star Wars and Star Trek nerds partake in.)

Those hoping for fireworks, though, were disappointed. Gates: “I don’t think either of us has anything to complain about. … I miss some people who’ve left the industry. It’s nice to have someone like Steve around.”

“On the Media” co-host Bob Garfield this week asks America’s-richest-man, philanthropist and future thinker Bill Gates what we’ve all wanted to know: What do you think of those Mac ads on TV that make you look really doofy? “But it’s you!” Garfield quips, when Gates refuses to talk about “another company’s” ads. Evidently, not everyone got the point, and Garfield at three in the morning found himself writing a response to a commentary about what a publicity hungry hound he is. That’s almost too meta for us.

Meanwhile, laughter was heard over this script that was cleverly written in the passive voice in which good fun was made of the Administration’s — any administration’s — inability to say “Yep, we did it — sorry,” and instead say that “mistakes were made.” (Though Clinton never did say “Sex was had with that woman” — and Garfield notes that all his examples are from Republicans — we bet a few slippery Democratic examples could have been found.)

Read more