How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Hedge Funds Are Siphoning Away America's Wealth--And You Can, Too

by Les Leopold

How hedge funds make money by taking it from the rest of us--and how "you" can join them!Top hedge fund managers make more than Oprah, Rupert Murdoch, and A-Rod combined--but they aren't running news and entertainment empires or playing baseball for the New York Yankees. Aren't you curious about how these hedge fund dudes make so much doing who knows what? You may even wonder if you can get there, too. After all, this is America!This book gives you the answers in a twelve-step guide to accumulating vast riches the way hedge fund managers do--by playing trillion-dollar poker with a marked deck. Through each easy step, you'll learn the sleight of hand and disregard for basic morality you'll need to move from making tens of dollars an hour to millions an hour! Along the way, you'll also question whether these hedge fund moguls make markets work better--as they and their apologists insist--or cause instability, siphon off capital, and destroy value without adding so much as a single widget to the economy.Takes a fascinating tour of the wild side of fantasy finance to explain just how hedge fund managers make so much money--and whether or not the million-an-hour crowd produces anything positive for society and the economyTeaches you hedge fund secrets that make it possible to pull down astounding sums in the space of minutes--from rigging your bets to milking millions in special tax breaks--"if" you're willing to bankrupt your morality for the cashCounters many of the most common arguments about why speculating in financial markets is somehow "worth more" than creating entertainment, electronics, or consumer goods that consumers wantWritten by Les Leopold, the popular AlterNet writer and author of "The Looting of America"

Genres: Nonfiction, Finance, Business, Economics

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 18, 2012

Reviews

[Marlowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hot takes on recent events tend not to age too well. There are political movements discussed in this book that have definitely changed since 2012 (including the chapter that covers Occupy Wall Street), but How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour has more than enough enduring information to still hold a place of value in the 2008 Recession post-mortem canon.

Leopold does an excellent job of explaining complicated concepts, and I feel like I have a much better grasp of things like Ponzi schemes, High-Frequency Trading, Flash Crashes, and how mortgages were being packaged to investors during the fatal housing bubble.

My only complaint about the book is that it left me feeling rather depressed. The problems are discussed, but there isn't a whole lot of practical "what you can do", or even a "how we can fix it". I understand why, but it made for tough reading.

[Mike Feder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Les Leopold's new book, How To Make A Million Dollars An Hour, is written with the same passion and clarity that inform his other books and articles. He writes because he is moved to create change--in short, to help. This book, while filled with facts and solid information, is always anchored in Les's desire to set things right. He's not preaching, he's just showing you exhibits A through Z and letting you judge who's guilty.

Les calls out the villians, describes their crimes in detail, and suggest ways in which WE, THE PEOPLE can reclaim our economy and our political system. Also, he provides helpful tips at the end of each chapter on how to make a million dollars an hour--just like any good hedge fund predator.

I've interviewed Les on my show several times and he is always front and center--intellectually and emotionally. He has the facts and he is on the side of the Angels.

Mike Feder
Sirius XM Radio

[Dan Petegorsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Les Leopold’s The Looting of America was one of the earliest and remains one of the best books for understanding the origins of the financial meltdown; How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour is a worthy sequel. In a twisted way, it’s also a very enjoyable read. Even though the rank injustice of it all makes your head explode, Leopold handles his material like Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi: his humor and sardonic wit mitigate the explosion. And though I’ve been an avid reader of much of the recent financial literature, I really learned something in the section on High Frequency Trading, since I haven't taken the time to understand what that was all about. Now, unfortunately, I do!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good primer on hedge funds for those of us not financial-speak fluent.