Making a million an hour means never having to say you're sorry

[Addison]

Les Leopold’s latest masterpiece, “How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get Away With Siphoning Off America’s Wealth,” is necessary, alarming and really funny. His talent for deconstructing complex financial terms and topics constitutes a public service. What he reveals in “How to Make,” in a sardonic and appropriately irreverent tone, is something more ominous. We exist in a political-economic system that allows people who manufacture nothing and bet on everything to control the financial destinies of the rest of the population with impunity, and make stupendous amounts of money doing it. Because, as Leopold writes, “Making a million an hour means never having to say you’re sorry.”

That inanity is what makes Leopold’s book so important, especially now, when the powers-that-be are pretending we’re back to our pre-2008-financial-crisis status—and that’s a good thing. Hey, the stock market hit all-time highs—that’s never happened ahead of a major catastrophe before!

His “handbook” approach to a pretty arcane topic is hilarious and horrifying. His lively chapters are divided so that they read like a twelve-step Capitalists Anonymous program on how to achieve wealth nirvana.

There’s Step 2, “Take, Don’t Make,” which asks how can these hedge fund managers who create absolutely nothing tangible be rewarded so outrageously for it? There’s Step 7, “Don’t Say Anything Remotely Truthful”—well, that speaks for itself. And Step 9, “Bet on the Race After You Know Who Wins,” gets to the heart of how these managers, who inspire a plethora of reverential business magazine profiles and books, aren’t doing anything particularly daring or even smart. Hell, it’s not hard to find the bodies if you’re the one burying them.

. . .

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/how_to_make_a_million_dollars_an_hour_20130523/

[Rex]

1. I knew this would happen one day.

A few making money on money on money, while most make 8 bucks an hour laboring over a cash register.

We are controlled by the plutocrats and everything is about them, while the other 99% scrape by because nothing is about us. We just live and die to serve the corporation.

[Ron Green]

2. One more of the several significant failures of Capitalism.

[HiPointDem]

3. +1

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. 2005 Citigroup's Plutonomy memo discovered.

They purposely created this ongoing disaster for their own ends.

In case you forgot...
& R

[Addison]

5. Holy carp!

I never heard of the Plutonomy memo, thanks for the tip.

Amazingly, Citigroup was talking about the "1%" six years before OWS!

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. Really? In that case I'm really glad I brought it back up.

I sometimes forget that most people are not addicted to watching what the people that matter are doing.

[Addison]

7. I'm sort of addicted

and getting more so every day.

I'm really glad you brought it back up and I think you ought to keep reposting the link.

Unfortunately it looks like neither of the links to the memos are still working. Scribd apparently took it down at Citibank's request.

Any idea who might have them still?

[Egalitarian Thug]

15. .pdf links at the bottom of the page.

Here

Edit: And good for you. Too many of us geezers have withdrawn into our own plans and interests and too many of the young discount us, never realizing that we've already been where they are and have knowledge they need if they want to move forward.

[Rex]

9. It's not illegal, but at some point pitchforks and torches

won't be either. Maybe they need to get THAT memo.

[justhanginon]

10. Let me know where and when!

I'm getting a little long in the tooth for the front lines but would happily carry a lighter for the torches and a whetstone for the pitchforks.

[Egalitarian Thug]

13. We've seen this before, many times. Bill Maher made an accurate observation about this

a couple weeks ago in his New Rules segment and there was a post here more recently regarding kidnapping in Mexico.

Frankly, I've had it and if the plutocrats and their gatekeepers start disappearing and end up decorating light poles, I'm not shedding any more tears for them than they have for the millions they've killed.

[cliffordu]

14. ^^^^this^^^^^

[BainsBane]

8. This is exactly what is wrong with America

the lessons in that book demonstrate it precisely.

[deathrind]

11. Read

Griftopia by Matt Taibbi...

[Initech]

12. If I were in charge hedge fund managing would be a federal felony.

Punishable by seizure of all assets and anyone convicted would face minimum of 20 years in jail without the possibility of parole.