NetJets Inc., the fractional ownership and plane leasing company owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has announced major layoffs. Due to a slowdown in business travel and the overall usage of private jets the company is firing 495 pilots.

Bloomberg quotes a statement from David Sokol, NetJets CEO who said that the decision came from looking at current and predicted flight demand. The news comes just around two months after Sokol took over and the company moved back to Columbus, Ohio.

Currently the company owns more planes than it is using. NetJets employs over 3,000 pilots worldwide. The layoffs come after an earlier layoff of 350 non-pilot workers which was announced in September. Some are questioning whether or not the fractional private jet model still has a place in this economy. I think it does but that the scale may be smaller than these companies would like.

I'm sure a list of the world's wealthiest is a fluctuating compendium these days making a list of donors a nice change of pace from Forbes. Of course most of these 'Billion Dollar Donors' would most likely make the cut for some of the nation's most affluent individuals as well but here their philanthropic tendencies are the focus of attention. These fourteen people, out of 793 billionaires worldwide, have actually donated, not just pledged, over $1 billion total. Here are some of the world's most generous givers:

1 Bill Gates, $28 billion donated.
2 George Soros, $7.2 billion
3 Gordon Moore (shown at right), $6.8 billion
4 Warren Buffett, $6.7 billion
5 Eli Broad, $2 billion
6 James Stowers, $1.9 billion
7 Herbert and Marion Sandler, $1.5 billion
8 Michael Bloomberg, $1.5 billion
9 Li Ka-shing, $1.37 billion
10 Dietmar Hopp, $1.25 billion
11 Michael Dell $1.2 billion
12 Klaus Tschira, $1.1 billion
13 Stephen Schmidheiny $1 billion
14 Ted Turner, $1 billion

Anybody you are surprised didn't make the list?

It's not quite as good as last year's $2.1 million but the Glide Foundation is still excited by the $1.68 million brought in by this year's charity auction to have lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett. The total is the second highest result for the annual auction. The Glide Foundation provides social services to San Francisco's homeless and poor. Buffett's late wife Susan was once a volunteer for Glide and Buffet's lunches have now raised more than $5.92 million for the charity since the auctions began in 2000. Last year's winner recently enjoyed his $2.1 million lunch with the Oracle of Omaha in New York City. This year's winner has decided to remain anonymous for the time being.

Why pay so much money for lunch with Buffett? The winner gets more than just a meet and greet with the billionaire. Mohnish Pabrai who won the 2007 auction for $650,100 told Bloomberg that both Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger "have been very gracious with access since the lunch." He has had two meetings with them since his lunch last June. The 2006 winner, Yongping Duan, who paid $620,100 for his lunch has said that he is always invited to the Sunday brunch that follows Berkshire Hathaway's popular annual shareholder meeting.

The 2008 winner Zhao Danyang of Hong Kong, brought his wife, son and friends for lunch with Buffett last week at Smith & Wollensky in New York City. Buffet already said after the lunch that he will see more of last week's winners. Zhao said of the lunch that the experience "can't be measured by money." Sounds like another satisfied customer.

The value of everything seems to be flexible in this economy and even the price of Warren Buffett might be lower. Buffett auctions off a lunch each year for charity. Last year, bidders were hungry for a meal with the billionaire, the winning bid was a record-setting $2.1 million. Will he get the same kind of return this year at a time when just about everything is priced lower? Or could the bidding go higher because in this economy we need all the good advice we can get and who better to ask than one of the greatest investment minds of our time? Who else can get a crowd of 35,000 to attend a shareholders meeting, those are rock star numbers.

Buffet's lunch benefits the Glide Foundation, an organization that provides social services to the poor and homeless in San Francisco. Like many other service groups, Glide has seen the needs for its services increase during the recession so Glide's founder, Rev. Cecil Williams is hoping for big numbers.

The winner and seven friends will dine at Smith and Wollensky in New York City. The auction closes Friday evening at 10 p.m. EDT and bids have already topped $50,000. The AP reports that last year's winner, Zhao Danyang of the Hong Kong-based Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund will be dining with Buffett on Wednesday, a meal that he calls "the chance of a lifetime."

How would you like to be a fly on the wall for this event, a secret meeting of some of the world's biggest givers? On May 5, Bill Gates, David Rockefeller Sr., Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet and other leading philanthropists met in New York to discuss the world's problems. The high-profile confab was organized by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Details of what the group discussed have not been made public but according to IrishCentral.com, each philanthropist was given 15 minutes to talk about their view of the future and how the team, which has donated billions to charitable causes, can help at a time when charity donations are falling. What is particularly compelling about the group assembled, which also reportedly included Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg, is that most of them have their own foundation and areas of focus when it comes to philanthropy. I can't help but imagine this meeting as some sort of Justice League scenario complete with flapping capes. Sounds more compelling than any summer blockbuster.

My colleague Deidre Woollard just reported that the number of millionaire households in the U.S. has shrunk to its lowest level since 2003. To that we can now add that the number of billionaires in the world has also seen a steep decline.

According to Forbes' newly-released annual list of the world's billionaires, there are now only 793 billionaires around the globe, down from 1,125 a year ago. That means 332 people lost their billionaire status.

This year the exclusive group has an average net worth of $3 billion, down 23% in 12 months, making for a loss of some $1.4 trillion. Americans now account for 44% of the money and 45% of the list's slots, up 7 and 3 percentage points from last year, respectively. Some billionaires have fared better than others, though most have lost masses of money.

Bill Gates lost $18 billion but regained his title as the world's richest man with a $40 billion fortune. Warren Buffett, last year's No. 1, saw his fortune decline $25 billion as shares of Berkshire Hathaway fell nearly 50% in 12 months, and is in the No. 2 slot with $37 billion. Mexican telecom titan Carlos Slim Helú maintains his spot in the top three but lost $25 billion, and is now worth $35 billion.

Famed billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. picked up a pricey bauble this Valentine's week, $250 million of Tiffany & Co. debt. Tiffany & Co. is still the world's second-largest retailer of luxury jewelry but like many retailers, especially those in the jewelry business, it took a deep hit over the past holiday season. With its stock share price falling and lower sales numbers, the Buffett boost provides much-needed insulation in an unsure world.

Buffett has been buying up debt everywhere lately on companies as varied as Harley-Davidson and Sealed Air Corp., the makers of Bubble Wrap. Bonds on this debt pay between 10 and 15 percent. The Tiffany bonds are at 10 percent and half of the bonds will mature in 2017, the rest two years later. Tiffany will use the money to repay debt and regroup in a time that has seen other jewelry retailers including Whitehall and, just last week, Fortunoff, fall into bankruptcy. In the last year or so much of Tiffany's strategy has involved opening smaller stores and creating more entry-level sterling silver pieces. Last March before the economic crisis really got into full spin, I questioned whether these stores and this merchandise represented a dilution of the TIffany brand. Given the prevailing winds of change, Tiffany could decide to reverse course, open fewer stores this year and strengthen its luxury reputation or it could continue on the current track and hope that consumers with less money to spend will still want a little piece of Tiffany.

The excesses of today's tycoons have come under lots of scrutiny lately due to the dire financial situation. Titans of business have always been at the forefront of American mythology however, in both good times and bad, and it's worth putting today's crop of nabobs in their proper historical context. That's what William G. Scheller has done admirably in his new book, Great Estates: The Lifestyles & Homes of American Magnates (Universe, $35). The oversized, lavishly illustrated volume celebrates the history of 40 of America's true barons of business, from the 1700s through this year's Forbes list, and opens the door into their private palaces along the way.

Beginning with the colonial era, when trade was overtaking landholding as a way to get rich, Great Estates follows the "restless careers of our most brilliant and driven merchants, industrialists, and financiers as they mastered a new economic world of textiles, railroads, oil, and steel." With the twentieth century came fresh opportunities: "automobiles, motion pictures, broadcasting, publishing, and retailing on a massive scale, and the vast horizon of high technology." And of course the massive mansions that men of great fortune erected as monuments to their success along the way.

These include Henry Clay Frick's Manhattan mansion, now a magnificent museum; William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon in California, aka Hearst Castle; and one of our personal favorites, railroad magnate Jay Gould's gothic castle on the Hudson River, Lyndhurst (pictured above on the book's cover). Shortly after he purchased the estate as a summer home in 1880, Gould was at the zenith of his power, having gained control of Western Union Telegraph, the New York Elevated Railway and the Union Pacific Railroad with rapacious methods that once caused him to be beaten by a Wall Street mob.

Forbes just released its annual Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, and billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates (above) is back on top after briefly ceding first place to Warren Buffett this spring. Gates has a net worth of $57 billion as opposed to Buffett's $50 billion - $12 billion less than he had several months ago before Berkshire Hathaway's stock plummeted 15%. Buffett isn't the only one to suffer a major reversal. The year's biggest loser was Sands casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, No. 15, whose fortune fell $13 billion in the past 12 months - about $1.5 million per hour, Forbes notes - to $15 billion.

Adelson's fellow casino kingpin Kirk Kerkorian, No. 27, was another underachiever, losing $6.8 billion this year. Still, they were both better off than the 33 moguls who fell off the list altogether due to declining fortunes. On the plus side, 31 new plutocrats moved up to take their places, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, 24, who makes his debut on the list with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion.

Other Forbes 400 first-timers include fertilizer tycoon Alexander Rovt, car dealer and art collector Norman Braman, and Patrón tequila founder John Paul DeJoria. Meanwhile, New York City's billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg was the year's biggest gainer, as his net worth jumped $8 billion to a total of $20 billion, snagging him the No. 8 position. Also worth noting among this year's stats:

The average net worth of Forbes 400 members is $3.9 billion.
There are 42 women on the list with an average net worth of $4.2 billion.
For the 2nd year in a row, the minimum net worth needed to make the list is $1.3 billion.
The assembled net worth of the richest Americans rose by only 2%, or $30 billion, to $1.57 trillion this year.

See the complete list here.

Here's a unique mark of inflation, Warren Buffett's annual auctioned lunch brought in more than three times the amount that it did last year. Last year, the lucky luncher bid $650,100 but this year, Chinese businessman Zhao Danyang offered $2.1 million to lunch with the famous investor at the Smith and Wollensky steakhouse in New York. Back in 2005, the winning bidder paid just $351,100 for the privlege.

The proceeds go to a non-profit foundation which fights poverty and homelessness.. So far Buffett has raised over $4 million but selling himself each year but his biggest charitable move has been his declaration that he will give the bulk of his fortune to the charitable foundation set up by Bill and Melinda Gates.

[Thanks, Ben]!

The winning bid for lunch with Warren Buffett this year was $620,100. The bidding was all done by five individuals and the winner, whose eBay name is "fastisslow," will be able to take 7 friends to lunch with Buffett. All the proceeds of the auction, which was the second highest charitable auction ever on eBay, will all go to the Glide Foundation, a non-profit San Francisco group that provides services and food to the homeless.

The most expensive charity auction on eBay was for a celebrity-autographed Harley that sold for over $800,000, and the next most expensive was a lunch with Tiger Woods, which sold in 2001 for $425,000.

Warren Buffett recently announced that he plans to give away the majority of his fortune upon his death. Many expected the bulk of his holdings to be given to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which was founded by Buffett's late wife, but it now appears that the largest contribution of $30.1 billion will go to the Gates Foundation. A contribution of that size would double the size of the foundation, already the world's largest. His wife's foundation will receive approximately $3 billion, while the three foundations run by each of his children will get over $1 billion each.

The billionaire is in excellent health now and has a net worth of approximately $42 billion dollars

Every year, Warren Buffett offers up the opportunity to have lunch with him in an auction that benefits the Glide Foundation. The tradition of auctioning a lunch began in 2004, when Buffett first became involved with the San Francisco nonprofit, which offers programs to help the poor, hungry and homeless. In early years, lunches often sold for $25-30,000, but when they switched the auctions onto eBay in 2003, making them much more visible, the numbers shot up dramatically. Last year's lunch with Warren sold for $351,100.

The auction will begin on June 22 and the starting price is $25,000.