America has crowned its richest person again, a coronation performed with the fiscal delicacy of a cash cannon. Confetti rained down in the shape of 10-K footnotes, each one begging to be stapled to a Cayman mailbox. The national anthem was replaced by a medley of stock alerts and an auto-tuned earnings call.

The winner, a financial singularity cosplaying as a citizen, arrived in a limousine that runs on convertible notes and Himalayan optimism. They waved with the gentle confidence of someone whose net worth has weather patterns. Even their shadow filed an S-1.

Reporters asked how it feels to be number one, and the answer arrived in metrics. Not happiness, but Adjusted Euphoria per Share, seasonally manipulated and quarter-over-quarter smiling. Analysts nodded like dashboard bobbleheads who finally got stock options.

Taxes were discussed the way ghost hunters discuss cold spots: fascinating, but tragically never in the same room. The family office described a ‘multi-jurisdictional spiritual journey’ for the money, which now resides in a North Dakota yurt with world-class broadband and zero corporeal form. The audit trail is a labyrinth built by minotaurs with NDAs.

Lifestyle notes were tasteful, if your taste runs to yachts so large they qualify as small continents. Breakfast is an acai bowl harvested from a vertical farm that also mines lithium on weekends. Their emotional support animal is the S&P 500 wearing a tiny tie and an aggressive buyback policy.

I tried to shake their hand, but the handshake redirected me to an investor portal featuring a countdown and a coupon for early believers. A valet retrieved my dignity with a pair of tongs and presented it beside a monogrammed titanium card wallet. Even the napkins were SPACs.

Philanthropy came up, which is to say, a foundation was announced to end the very problems the fortune sells at retail. The plan is to disrupt homelessness by introducing surge pricing for ceilings. Pilot programs include a kindness index traded on a secondary exchange behind a speakeasy wall.

Innovation never sleeps, it just spins off a subsidiary. This year’s breakthroughs include Return on Yacht, Gross Margin of Being Right Online, and a wearable that pings you whenever empathy can be monetized. The beta chart goes up and to the right until it achieves escape velocity and mocks gravity for being legacy code.

At the press conference, economists stood on either side like interpretive dancers translating compound interest into sighs. A spokesperson unveiled next-gen accounting hardware, the artisanal abacus calculator, guaranteed to reduce taxable moments by aligning your aura with deferred revenue. The crowd applauded in accrual basis.

Asked for advice, the champion offered a three-step plan that sounded like a treasure map written by a venture capitalist. Step one: be born inside a limited liability company with dual-class shares and a bassinet moat. Step two: pivot from product to narrative until your price-to-story ratio qualifies for weather warnings. Step three: lease the moon back to tides.

Meanwhile, the rest of us continue to participate in the economy like background actors with speaking fees paid in exposure. We clip coupons that have vesting schedules. Our retirement plans are a loaf of bread, a cautious index fund, and a sincere hope the robot at HR remembers our name.

As I wrapped my notebook, a drone dropped a commemorative coin worth more than my apartment and less than their couch cushion lint. It bore the inscription ‘In Adjusted We Trust’ and a faint smell of victory champagne. The confetti kept falling, the anthem kept auto-tuning, and somewhere a wallet winked—either mine or theirs, but I know which one got the crown.