金融英语阅读：America’s richest techies

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　　What slowdown? Consumers are buying up technology goods--and driving up the fortunes of the Forbes 400's tech kings.
, c) t, `1 R" D2 ?/ w  O" {8 v: i% B　　SAN FRANCISCO -- There are two Americas today. In one, people desperately search for work; the unemployment rate stays stubbornly high and the poverty rate increases. In the other, the world of big tech companies, sales are booming and fortunes are growing. The opportunities seem endless.
& L1 Z8 `8 R. ?; K$ O9 t) I　　So it is for the tech kings on the Forbes 400 list of 2010. The fortunes of the 10 richest American technology billionaires rose a combined $13.6 billion in 2010 compared with their net worth on the 2009 Forbes 400 list. Bill Gates tops out the list as the richest (again!), with a net worth that Forbes puts at $54 billion--up $4 billion from a year ago.
, G) y- s- R  b& \1 i/ @　　Microsoft is one of those companies selling like there's no tomorrow. Its Windows 7 operating system, introduced a year ago, flies off the shelves at the rate of seven copies per second. Those sales, however, have failed to boost Microsoft stock, which is largely unchanged over the last year.
　　Most of Gates' wealth is outside Microsoft; his stake in the company is worth $16 billion. Much of the remainder of his fortune is managed by Cascade Investments, including his 42% stake in Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. These days Gates spends his time running his philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
　　The biggest gainer in the pack of richest U.S. techies was the wonderboy Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder of social network Facebook. Zuckerberg's fortune more than tripled in the past year, from $2 billion last year to $6.9 billion this year. Private-equity investments in Facebook over the past year put the value of the company at $23 billion. Revenue is expected to top $2 billion this year. Zuckerberg continues to live in a rented house in Palo Alto, Calif.
, y# M: {( C# R3 l* \: z3 Q　　Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is reaping the benefits of sizzling Kindle sales. The value of Amazon stock climbed more than 30% in the past year, and Bezos' net worth rose $3.8 billion to $12.6 billion. Bezos still has 90% of his net worth tied up in Amazon stock; he sold $400 million of Amazon shares since January 2010. On the side, Bezos is funding aerospace company Blue Origin, which is developing spacecraft in West Texas.
/ j! o1 f1 T* B6 F　　Steve Jobs' Apple has sold 3 million iPads since introducing them in April. And sales of the iPhone continue to boom, despite widely publicized antenna problems in the latest iPhone. (Those problems are remedied with a rubber case that covers the antennas.) But most of Jobs' fortune, which rose $1 billion in the last year to $6.1 billion, lies with the value of the Disney stock he owns--to the tune of $4.4 billion.
$ N! Z6 f# E3 B0 H% k8 J　　Dell is perhaps the tech company struggling the most among its peers. Dell's stock fell 29% in the past year. But most of Michael Dell's $14 billion fortune lies outside the company he founded, in assets managed by MSD Capital, an 80-person firm set up to take care of his wealth. Michael Dell's net worth fell $500 million from a year ago.