God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. On 9/26/07, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > NY Times, September 26, 2007 > About New York > Out of Sight, Till Now, and Giving Away Billions > By JIM DWYER > > Rumpled by habit, limping on old knees, smiling faintly after a night of > celebration, Chuck Feeney stepped out of a building on Park Avenue > Monday night and vanished, carried away on a river of passing strangers > who knew nothing about him. Perfectly disguised as an ordinary man, Mr. > Feeney, one of the most generous and secretive philanthropists of modern > times, had dropped from sight once again. It is a skill he mastered over > decades. > > Last year, the foundation Mr. Feeney created, the Atlantic > Philanthropies, gave $458 million in grants around the world, more than > any United States charity except two, the Ford and the Bill and Melinda > Gates Foundations. Atlantic, and small predecessors also started by Mr. > Feeney, have given $4 billion since 1982; the plan is to give away the > remaining assets — now $4 billion, but growing every day — by 2017. > > Despite this record, Mr. Feeney is little known, a result of the web of > intrigues that he fashioned to disguise his identity, his wealth and his > giving. Atlantic does not appear in the annual rankings of the biggest > American philanthropies because it was set up in Bermuda, to avoid the > disclosures required in the United States. A rare glimpse of Mr. > Feeney's story emerged a decade ago during a business dispute, but he > quickly disappeared from the news.
-- Jim Devine / "The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous." -- Naomi Klein.
