Strip, milk, flip

Being a billionaire is no bed of roses is the impression we're supposed to get from a story today in MFD's magazine. Such humanization is part of a wide campaign to improve the image of the CR's super rich. MFD said in Feb. that we need more people like Pavel Tkáč of J&T who can hop in their jet and fly off to dinner. Václav Klaus vehemently denied on F1 radio that there are groups of people getting rich to the detriment of others. Johannes Kinsky of JP Morgan told Czech Business Weekly that U.S. robber barons are now considered heroes of economic expansion and suggested that Czechs can manage a similar transformation. The difference is that few of the Czech robber barons actually created anything the way Carnegie, Rockefeller or Vanderbilt did. The Czech super rich mostly got that way by stripping, milking and flipping. That legacy won't be so easily painted over. [Czech Republic wealthy]