Rogue Traders
Retired hedge fund impresario Jay Newman has written
his first novel about a rogue military-backed operation to elect a U.S. Senator
as president. Newman is famous for his being the point person for the giant
Elliot Management hedge fund’s successful effort to reap billions of dollars
profits on Argentina’s defaulted debt. His background in hedge fund operations
and international finance allows him to tell a story of corruption in the
highest places of finance and politics domestically and internationally.
His story evolves a group of special forces operatives
in Afghanistan who make a pact to save America from its incompetent leadership.
One of their members has become a sitting senator and he becomes their vehicle
to become president. Of course, that needs money, and we find them stealing two
billion dollars in currency that was air dropped into the Syrian desert to
support America’s allies in the region.
However, that money had to be laundered and the
vehicles they chose was a hedge fund in New York that they plotted to seize
control of and a corrupt central banker in Latvia who also happens to launder
Russian money as well. The hedge fund is run by the sociopathic Elias Vicker
who makes his money by investing in low probability – high impact events based
on inside information.
Newman’s plot takes us to the Russian-backed Parsifal
Group whose business is to create events that would have a huge market impact.
As a result, the hedge fund has advanced knowledge of an explosion here, an air
disaster there, and a 9/11 styled event. Parsifal profits from its investment
in the hedge fund.
Along the way we meet the New York hedge fund
glitterati, nymphomaniac Russian ballerinas with many of the leading characters
found in compromising positions. As an aside Newman mentions how Saudi Arabia’s
MBS obtained compromising pictures of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and how Russian
intelligence operatives have infiltrated the highest reaches of American
politics, journalism, and finance. How much of this it true along with the
Latvian Central Bank acting as a laundromat for the Russian oligarchy, I do not
know.
At times I found Newman’s plot choppy, but this book
represents a very strong first effort.
Fpr the full Amazon URL see: Rogue Traders (amazon.com)
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