The New York Times has an interesting graphic comparing the fortunes of the wealthiest Americans, adjusting for inflation.

Stephen Girard just edges out Bill Gates for fourth place, $83 billion to $82 billion. There are other Philadelphians or Pennsylvanians among the figures on the list from the Gilded Age.

Discuss among yourselves.

Pretty cool graphic.

Personally, I find the history of the Vanderbilt family very intriguing, especially the humble beginnings of The Commodore. I think he's a perfect case of being in the right place at the right time. If we was alive today, we'd probably find him pooping in Rittenhouse Square, but he just happened to be the right man for his day. Fascinating.

__Jason

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Yeah, I saw that this morning. It's pretty cool.

I like the history and the details of how they made their money. Sometimes it was the 2nd or 3rd venture. Gotta keep trying!

The NYT article ranked the people by calculating wealth as a fraction of national wealth, not taking their wealth and adjusting it for inflation (unless I'm misunderstanding it...) so I don't know how accurate a comparison this chart is. The national economy has grown so much since Cornelius Vanderbilt made his fortune in the 1840s that no one now can possibly own an equivalent share of it.

No. (But I oversimplified in explaining the method.) They are not ranked according to percentage of GDP. Girard's fortune was a far greater slice of GDP than Gates' amassed wealth. The means of determining the common value was to relate each fortune to contemporary GDP and then normalize for inflation, growth and all that.

Rockefeller happens to finish on top in both adjusted absolute terms and as a portion of GDP.

Both Girard and Gates deserve praise for giving so much of their fortune away to public purposes. I think that Gates now has the best funded foundation in the country, and students at Girard College and others will long benefit from Girard's strong sense of public purpose.

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Thanks for electing me Delegate to the Democratic National Convention From the First Congressional District Supporting Barack Obama. Serving as an Obama delegate was a truly inspiring experience.

That's really interesting. Reminds me of a great book on the subject; "The wealthy 100," they also adjust true wealth for inflation. Either way one thing is for sure -- Rockerfeller will always without a doubt remain #1. His estimated worth was 1/65th of the GNP!!

It is just such a shame that Girard has all but been forgotten.

I never even heard of the guy, and the social sciences courses in k-12 in Illinois tend to be very good especially my district, until I moved to Philly.

I would be really curious how many high school history books actually have a mention of Girard.

Even in that NYTimes article they sidenote mention he helped finance the War of 1812. Wasn't more on the level of actually bailing out the United States?

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Czar of the 26th Ward.

Britain's top educrats just announced a new national history curriculum that makes no mention of Winston Churchill.

Girard may have been a pivotal figure in his day and a generous philanthropist, but to the current crop of historians, he just another dead white guy. And nobody's investing any effort in getting a dead white guy into the curriculum.

I think that J.P. Morgan bailed out the US twice. The first time with his own money. The second time he locked some European bankers in a room and wouldn't let them out until they agreed to buy enough US bonds.

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