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How many hedge fund managers does it take..?

A bit of Friday levity, courtesy McSweeney’s.

Word problems for future hedge fund managers:

Elementary (AGES 5-10)

  • Dick has $1m. Jane has $1m. If Dick and Jane both give their $1m to T. Boone, how many millions will he claim he can turn it into?
  • Among those earning 10-figure incomes, Mr Soros’s total annual compensation is greater than Mr Falcone’s. Mr Falcone’s is greater than Mr Griffin’s. Mr Griffin’s is smaller than Mr Soros’s, and Mr Paulson’s is greater than Mr Soros’s. In descending order, list the men by the respective hotness of their trophy wives.
Intermediate (AGES 11-15)
  • Your middle-class parents have a combined household income of $115,000. You receive an allowance of $20 per week. If you save all your allowance for two years, how much debt will you need to finance a hostile takeover of your family? How will you structure the debt?
  • At 10 am, a private Gulfstream G650 takes off from New York, headed south to the Caribbean island of St Bart’s, traveling at a speed of Mach 9. At 11 am, a private Gulfstream G550 takes off from St. Bart’s, headed north to New York, traveling at Mach 8.85. Both jets fly at 50,000 feet on parallel flight paths. When the aircraft pass each other somewhere over the Atlantic, how long after seeing the G650 will the owner of the G550 kick himself for not going top-of-the-line? (Answer should be expressed in nautical miles.)
Advanced (AGES 16-18)
  • Mr Smith is being investigated by the SEC for insider trading. Calculate the probability of Mr Smith’s relocation to Dubai.
  • If an American hedge-fund manager makes $900 million and is taxed at a rate of 15 percent, how many American factory workers making $32,500 and being taxed at a rate of 25 percent does that make a sucker of? (Show your work.)
  • Days before the housing bubble bursts, you short the ABX subprime index and, when the ensuing mortgage crisis causes millions of families to lose their homes to foreclosure, you realize a $550m profit. Since, for you, this is the opposite of a problem, find the opposite of an answer.
Answers in the comments, dear readers.

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Comments

  1. May 12   1:25 Posted by Anonymous [report]

    correction of typo - that’s 2.98% average taxes paid for the bottom half, not 2.08%. Sorry about that!

    FACTS MATTER.

  2. May 12   1:22 Posted by Anonymous [report]

    advanced question #2 - correct answer

    NONE - per the latest IRS average data, for 2005, also available from the Tax Foundation as ff104, a 32K worker is in the bottom of the 3rd quartile, paying an average federal tax on AGI of 6.93%. Of course with deductions etc the 32K worker would drop into the bottom 50% on AGI ($30881 in ‘05), and the bottom half average 2.08% of their AGI paid as federal taxes, so the question is even more transcendently flatulent than at first glance.

    Since in aggregate the top 5% pay 59% of taxes and the bottom 75% pay less than 15%, each hedge-fund manager is is fact carry the load for 60 factory-working “suckers” (4X taxes and 15X in the cohort), and only a demagogue, or a Democratic candidate can fail to see that the “suckers” are more accurately described as FREE RIDERS, insofar as their fiscal contributions are concerned.

    I have no idea why the rhetoric of class warfare is creeping into FT’s blogs. Perhaps we can nominate Stacy-Marie for the Leni Reifenstahl award in “accuracy achievement”.

  3. May 10   16:18 Posted by Sunlight [report]

    Answer to advanced question #2. Zero. Since the US manufacturing base has already been exported to Asia, there are no factory workers left here to be made suckers of.

  4. May 09   19:04 Posted by Isaac Muchengwa [report]

    ….Can’t wait for the solutions! I am sure they’ll make a good reading!

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