[...]... One day I ran into a young man who worked as a day trader a kind of one-man hedge fund Day traders hop in and out of markets each day, trying to locate small differences in prices between similar investments and betting on which way stocks and bonds will go I asked him how a financial transaction tax on trades might affect the kinds of maneuvers he was making He wasn’t happy at all about that idea He... Scandinavia! (At least, when it comes to equality.) How can this be? Aren’t we always hearing that Americans hate European collectivism? Aren’t we constantly bombarded with messages about how we need to reward the movers and the shakers? Haven’t we internalized the “greed is good” mentality by now? Or can it really be true that we are hard-wired for fairness? See, it’s not easy to make a million an... Richard Fairbank, Capital One $14.9 $7,163 Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs $14.1 $6,779 Average $16.6 $7,981 It would take the average family 64 days to make what the average top banker/insurance CEO makes in one hour! Lawyers Aren’t trial lawyers crippling the economy with their big class-action suits and damage claims? Maybe so, but they’re not nearly as well paid as CEOs and the glamour professions Top... sums of wealth, it never goes away The people who have it will always have it If you don’t have it, you’re not likely to get it (unless you religiously follow our twelve-step guide) Wealth creates a permanent money aristocracy that can bend democracy to the breaking point It can change a country from a meritocracy to an aristocracy That’s why we have (or had) a sizable inheritance tax—as a nation, we... people seem to be everywhere, it’s no big deal that hedge-fund managers make big money as well Repeat after me: I am a big deal I am the biggest deal! To become the biggest deal of all, you need to understand that hedge-fund moguls inhabit a parallel universe of riches a universe so dimly lit that few have any real idea how much hedge-fund moguls make and what they do to make it Say “hedge fund” to your... tough regulations leads to innovation, and innovation leads to productivity Conversely, argues Mallaby, any benefits that regulations might bring must be “measured against the risk of impeding innovation in the capital markets—an outcome that would be about as desirable as stifling innovation in Silicon Valley” (94) You’ve got to have steel cojones to make that claim Mallaby is basically saying that... and they’re likely to think you’re in the garden supply business And What about Hedge-Fund Managers? As you can see from the following chart, the top ten hedge-fund managers receive truly astronomical incomes The average top hedge-fund honcho earns more than ten times as much as our average top celebrity It would take more than seventeen years for the average family to earn as much as the average top... AAA credit ratings, and resold to investors looking to make a killing They made a killing, alright The economy was one casualty, the homebuyers were another At the time when Mallaby wrote his piece in 2007, it was still fashionable to argue that perhaps exotic securities such as CDOs combined with credit default swaps helped the economy Yet now we know that they were toxic waste masquerading as AAA-rated... crash, the big financial insurer was AIG It bet nearly half a trillion dollars by insuring all kinds of mortgage-related securities against default (Think of it as AIG providing mortgage insurance for tens of thousands of homes at the same time.) Because these credit default swaps weren’t regulated, AIG didn’t have to put aside reserves as a real insurance company does So when the market crashed, and... for a more equal distribution of wealth, suggesting that Americans may possess a commonly held “normative” standard for the distribution of wealth despite the many disagreements about policies that affect that distribution, such as taxation and welfare (Norton and Ariely 2011, 12) Imagine that! Americans, even Republicans who voted for John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan, would rather . money aristocracy that can bend democracy to the breaking point. It can change a country from a meritocracy to an aristocracy. That’s why we have (or had) a sizable inheritance tax—as a nation,. Work another half hour and retire. Or tough it out for just one day and make as much as the average family makes in 179 years! You’re about to learn the secrets that enabled America’s top hedge-fund. $6,010 William Gary $12.1 $5,817 Average $20.0 $9,615 It would take the average family 76 days to make what the average top lawyer makes in one hour! Doctors et al.? We haven’t been able to come