Thiel, according to a 2006 Bloomberg profile, has invested his entire liquid net worth in Clarium. That's not quite technically true: Thiel has actually invested his money in a separate account managed by Clarium according to the same strategy his firm uses for outside investors. (Clarium has two other such separately managed accounts, but they are small in value.)

These matters are disclosed to the investors Clarium courts. One forwarded a copy of Clarium's marketing materials to Valleywag. Figuring out Thiel's holdings is a simple matter of subtraction.

Clarium LP, the name of Clarium's main fund, had $1.7 billion in assets under management as of March. The firm's "strategy assets" — total assets, including separately managed accounts — add up to $2.1 billion. So the ceiling on Thiel's liquid net worth is $400 million. (That's not counting his 5 percent stake in Facebook, recently valued at around $100 million.) After losing roughly $5 billion in assets from bad trading and client withdrawals in the second half of 2008, Clarium has continued to perform poorly, entirely missing the recent market rally.

So who cares if he's a hundred-millionaire instead of a billionaire? Thiel does, for one. He did not make nearly as much from the $1.5 billion sale of PayPal as he believes he deserves, according to people familiar with his thinking — the source of a long-simmering feud with top Valley venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital, one of PayPal's backers.

And a perception of outsized wealth is the source of his newfound social standing in Manhattan, where he recently relocated. It's the reason why he gets impromptu dinner invitations from the likes of New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. It's the reason why people pay the slightest attention to his crackpot social theories. Take away that crucial tenth digit on his net worth, and he's just another indistinguishable member of the averagely ultrarich.

Clarium's strategy is to take advantage of supposed distortions in the market caused by government intervention. But the New York State Common Retirement Fund has intervened more directly in Thiel's fund, investing $8 million over the course of three months last spring — just in time for Clarium's holdings to crater from $7 billion to $2 billion. The market meltdown didn't help, but Clarium's stated strategy should have thrived in last year's environment, given the Bush administration's repeated attempts to prop up Wall Street. But perhaps it's a sneaky stratagem to bankrupt the government!

While mismanaging public money, Thiel has also made sure he won't be refilling the state till anytime soon. Thiel is actually far less rich than people think. (A Clarium insider tells us, for example, that there's no way he's a billionaire, as Forbes has reported.) His single best-performing investment is not Clarium, but rather his personal 5 percent stake in Facebook, which he purchased for $500,000 and is now conservatively worth $100 million. Sources at Facebook and Clarium confirm that Thiel holds his Facebook shares through a Roth IRA, which allows tax-free withdrawals on his retirement. He'll have paid at most $175,000 in taxes on that fortune. Getting the government out of one's pocketbook — it's every libertarian's dream!

And perfectly legal. Thiel believes neither death nor taxes are inevitable. (When he's not hacking the IRS code, he also funds longevity research.) The only downside? He might be too clever by half. When word gets to Washington of his tax maneuver, populist-rage-filled Congressmen may well call for an end to the Roth exemption. The taxman cometh.