Except for a few hedge fund guys, no one had a better 2014 than French economist Thomas Piketty, who managed the once-in-a-century trick of writing an economics book that became a best seller and made Thomas Piketty, French economist, "cool." How hard is Thomas Piketty balling right now?

Thomas Piketty is balling so hard that when the French government tried to give him the "Legion d'honneur," a French word meaning "the highest honor that the French government can give," Thomas Piketty was like, "No thanks, idiots."

"It isn't up to the government to decide who's honorable," the 43-year-old professor at the Paris School of Economics told Agence France-Presse. "They would do better to concentrate on reviving growth."

Thomas Piketty wrote a 700-page economics book that all the smart economists who read it agreed was great and all the pseudointellectuals like me who only read the first 100 pages also agreed was "very provocative" and all the TV hosts who did not read any of it agreed was "really making a splash" and all the regular people who don't even give a shit about economics still heard about, because they couldn't avoid it. He followed it up by basically telling the president of France "Do your fucking job, man—I did." To put this in American terms, imagine if you wrote Twilight and then told George W. Bush to shove his Presidential Medal of Freedom that he offered you up his fucking ass in the same year. Good year.

Will 2015 be the year of the Thomas Piketty backlash/ sex scandal/ careless racist remark/ partying with Puff Daddy? History indicates it is likely.

[Photo: AP]