New York Times – This is not an obvious time to be glorifying financial tycoons. Making enough money to buy your own private island might have earned you an airbrushed magazine cover a decade ago. Nowadays, though, the erstwhile Masters of the Universe are viewed with such opprobrium that one of their favorite lawyers told me recently he was advising his clients to soft-pedal their objections to financial reform legislation because the more Wall Street hates it, the better it plays on Main Street.
Today’s populist mood has not deterred Sebastian Mallaby. In “More Money Than God,” his smart history of the hedge fund business, Mallaby does more than explain how finance’s richest moguls made their loot. He argues that the obsessive, charismatic oddballs of the hedge fund world are Wall Street’s future — and possibly its salvation.
