ABC News The Pay Check

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ABC-The Pay Check

[WORDS]

  ♧ astounding : a. 깜짝 놀라게 하는, 아연실색할

  ♧ Alpha Magazine

  ♧ hedge fund : n. 【금융】 헤지 펀드 《국제 증권 및 외환 시장에 투자해

                               단기 이익을 올리는 민간 투자 자금》

  ♧ Alex Rodriguez = A 깽

  ♧ James Simons

  ♧ take on : 떠맡다

  ♧ Jordan : n. 요르단

  ♧ make/lay a bet on A : v. A에 내기를 하다

  ♧ commodity : n. 상품, 일용품, 필수품;(농업·광업의) 제1차 상품, 미가공품

  ♧ return : n. 보수, 수입, 수익(률), 이윤(yield)

  Finally tonight, astounding paychecks. We noted in Alpha Magazine a list of the top earning hedge fund managers and what they made just last year. Some of them made a lot, I mean really a lot. How about more than a billion dollars? ABC's John Berman took a few moments to absorb that thought and then asked 'how can you spend that much?'

  Alex Rodriguez is the highest paid baseball player in America, 25 million dollars per year. But, in order to match the earnings of James Simon, A Rod would have to play until he's a hundred.

  James Simons, the top hedge fund manager in America, made 1.7 billion dollars! One point seven billion dollars in one year!

 Alpha Magazine says, last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made a combined 14 billion dollars. How much is that? It's more than the national income of Jordan. It's enough to pay New York City's 80,000 teachers for three years. It's about 443 dollars per second, every second of every day.

   Hedge fund managers make huge bets on stocks and commodities and take a huge cut of the profits.

  "They buy when nobody is willing to buy. They sell when no one's willing to sell. They take on great risk and they deserve high returns for doing so."

  Three guys made more than a billion. What can you do with more than a billion dollars a year? We asked Bloom&Gale's Person and Shopper, Marian Goodman.

  "How much time do you have?"  "Well."

  She suggested a nice set of Pertage sheets."

  "In this particular case, you know, a king set of sheets is 1,800 dollars."

  "Eighteen hundred bucks?"  "Yeah." "Do you have anything more expensive?"

  We went to the grocery store.
  "How much for everything?"

  "What do you mean how much for everything?"

  "Everything."  "For the entire store?" "Yeah." "Probably, about 2,600,000 in here."

  It turns out a billion dollars is hard to spend.

  By the way, this piece was a 105 seconds long, which means the top hedge fund managers just made more than 46,000 dollars.

  John Berman, ABC News, New York.