and they won't be the first to do so.

Isn't it?

in their wisdom and set far above other men. Then a crash comes (and it always does when capitalism is deregulated) and all that paper just seems to evaporate. They're their own worst enemy as they try to unload what they have at rock bottom prices because cash will be king and they forgot to put aside enough of that. Some will work through the grief process through depression to acceptance that they're no better than anyone else, they just got lucky for a while; others will become more rapacious than ever, desperate to get back on top of the shitpile again, something that will be made a hell of a lot harder by new regulations that always follow a crash, if the crash is big enough to make billionaires into single number millionaires.

I worked for a savings & loan company AFTER the Charles Keating/Lincoln Savings crash. I got to see the paperwork behind some of the loans that took people like Keating down, and took them down hard.

Simplified version:

One guy buys a bunch of properties @ fair market value. Sells one property to his buddy at an inflated price. Now all those other similar properties in that area are valued on paper at that inflated price. Instant millions/billions of collateral to borrow against and buy other sh*t. The problem was that they kinda forgot they had to pay back those loans. The only way to do that was to sell the properties at even more inflated prices, and no one wanted to buy. POP goes the ponzi bubble.