The ocean floor is the final spending frontier for the world's richest people. Journeying to see what's on the bottom aboard a personal submersible is a wretched excess guaranteed to trump the average mogul's stable of vintage Bugattis or a $38 million round-trip ticket to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket.Perhaps I am being paranoid, but there may be a trend that it quite troubling here. We have heard about the disappearing frogs and honeybees, but now our billionaires are retreating to the bottom of the ocean...
Luxury-submarine makers and salesmen from the Pacific Ocean to the Persian Gulf say fantasy and secrecy are the foundations of this nautical niche industry built on madcap multibillionaires.
``Everyone down there is a wealthy eccentric,'' says Jean- Claude Carme, vice president of marketing for U.S. Submarines Inc., a Portland, Oregon-based bespoke submarine builder. ``They're all intensely secretive.''
Who owns the estimated 100 luxury subs carousing the Seven Seas mostly remains a mystery.
Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., warned his boat builder that loose lips sink ships.
What do the billionaires know that the rest of us do not? Be afraid...
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