An article in this week's Barron's, "Where Bill Gates' [sic] Money Goes to Grow," discusses Cascade Investments, Bill Gates's investment vehicle.  The author, Christopher C. Williams, writes that Gates "made his fortune in technology but is investing it elsewhere."

That "elsewhere" includes a Mexican brewery, a Texas-based amusement park company and even a gay and *** website operator whose stock has lost 90% of its value!

But Gates also invests in closed-end funds.  Included in a chart appended to the article showing a sample of the Cascade portfolio are two closed-end funds: Western Asset/Claymore Inflation-Linked Opportunities & Income Fund WIW and Western Asset/Claymore Inflation-Linked Securities & Income Fund WIA.

I checked out the annual reports of WIW and WIA. Both funds invest approximately 80% of their portfolio in TIP's.  Both are leveraged, but do not use AMPS, having redeemed them in November 2006, thus avoiding the recent AMPS crisis.

It's nice to know that I am in such good company, having the world's third richest person as a fellow member of the oft-misunderstood Closed-End Investors Club.

Jagor