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Ray Dalio was born in 1949 in Jackson Heights, Queens, to homemaker Anne and jazz musician Marino, and grew up on Long Island. After a finance degree from C.W. Post College and a clerk job on the New York Stock Exchange floor, he earned a Harvard MBA in 1973. At Shearson Hayden Stone he advised cattle ranchers and grain producers on hedging with futures, until he was fired for punching his boss at a New Year's Eve party in 1974. In 1975 he founded Bridgewater Associates, trading out of a converted barn in Wilton, Connecticut, and wrote the Daily Observations research report. McDonald's signed on, followed by the World Bank and Eastman Kodak pension funds.

Bridgewater launched Pure Alpha in 1991 and the All Weather Fund in 1996, pioneering risk parity, and became the world's largest hedge fund by 2005. Dalio predicted the 2008 crisis in 2007 and coined the D-process for deleveraging. His Principles, self-published in 2011 and a number one bestseller in 2017, codified radical transparency, with meetings recorded and staff rating each other on iPads. In 2023 the New York Times and Rob Copeland's book The Fund reported that returns came largely from Dalio's own instincts and that the culture bred paranoia; Dalio called the book fiction. He sold his last shares in 2025.

• Risk parity used borrowed money to scale up bonds until their risk matched stocks, rather than splitting dollars 60/40.
• He gave up the co-CEO title in 2017 and handed his voting rights to the board in 2022.
• A 2026 filing showed more than 75% of his family office's half-billion-dollar U.S. equity bet sat in gold-based ETFs.
• His oldest son Devin died in a car accident in 2020 at age 42.
• Dalio Philanthropies funds OceanX and Project CETI, which uses AI to study sperm whale communication.

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Jordan Belfort reached Wall Street in 1987 at L.F. Rothschild, only to lose his job after the Black Monday crash that October. He moved to a Long Island strip mall boiler room, learned the commissions in penny stocks, and in 1989 launched Stratton Oakmont, staffed with childhood friends reading hard-sell scripts. The firm ran pump and dump schemes on thinly traded stocks. A 1991 Forbes exposé that called it a boiler room instead drew hundreds of recruits, and by 1993 the firm was rigging IPOs, parking shares in secretly controlled nominee accounts. During the Steve Madden IPO, Belfort allegedly made $22 million in about three hours.

As the SEC and FBI agent Gregory Coleman closed in, Belfort tried to bribe the agent, then laundered money through Swiss accounts held in the name of his second wife Nadine Caridi's British aunt, with cash smuggled across borders. When the aunt died in 1996, he steered his yacht into a Mediterranean storm toward Monaco; it capsized and the Italian Coast Guard rescued him. In 1998 his Swiss banker, arrested on unrelated charges, turned informant. Belfort wore a wire against his associates and served 22 months of a 36-month sentence. Years later, the studio behind the film of his life was investigated over money allegedly diverted from Malaysia's 1MDB fund.

• Penny stock brokers could earn commissions of up to 50% of a trade.
• A rescue plane sent for the capsized yacht later crashed after a bird strike.
• Belfort breached his plea deal by slipping a partner a note warning him about the wire, and agents found it.
• A co-founder of the production company was the stepson of Malaysia's former prime minister.
• Belfort later filed a $300 million lawsuit against the film's producers, saying he would not have sold his rights had he known the money was dirty.

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John Paulson was born in Queens in 1955 to Jacqueline, the daughter of Jewish immigrants, and Alfredo Paulson, an Ecuadorian orphan who served and was wounded in Italy in World War II. After dropping out of college for sales, he returned to NYU, graduated valedictorian in 1978, and became a Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School in 1980. He worked at Boston Consulting Group, with Leon Levy at Odyssey Partners, in mergers at Bear Stearns, and at Gruss Partners, then founded Paulson & Co. in 1994 with $2 million and one employee. Merger arbitrage grew the fund to $300 million by 2003.

Seeing a housing market built on weak loans, Paulson bought credit default swaps on subprime mortgages and personally made more than $4 billion in the collapse. He helped select assets for Goldman Sachs' Abacus 2007-AC1, which Goldman sold without disclosing his short position; the SEC sued Goldman, which settled for $550 million, while Paulson was not charged and his firm said it was transparent with Goldman. He made nearly $5 billion on gold in 2010, then lost heavily in 2011 on Bank of America, Citigroup and the China-based forestry firm Sino-Forest, suspected of fraud.

• He gave $400 million to Harvard's engineering school in 2015 and $100 million to the Central Park Conservancy in 2012.
• A single April 2024 fundraiser at his Palm Beach home raised a reported $50.5 million for Donald Trump's campaign.
• In June 2026 Conn-Selmer, owned by his firm, moved brass instrument production from Ohio to China despite his public criticism of offshoring.
• In 2017 he and Jenny Zaharia sent the Spence School a letter threatening to withdraw support over what they called anti-white indoctrination.
• As of 2025, a holding company he controls is working to revive an abandoned gold mine in Idaho.

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Between 2004 and 2018, U.S. multinationals used the double Irish arrangement to build roughly $1 trillion in untaxed offshore reserves. The method: sell intellectual property at cost to a Bermuda subsidiary, license it to an Irish subsidiary that books foreign sales, then drain those profits back to Bermuda as royalties. Ireland judged tax residency by where a company was managed, so the Bermuda-run Irish company fell between systems, and a 1996 U.S. "check the box" rule let the IRS disregard it. Routing royalties through the Netherlands, the Dutch sandwich, avoided a 20% Irish withholding tax. Irish revenue rulings for Apple date to 1991, and PwC partner Feargal O'Rourke is called the scheme's modern architect.

Economist James R. Hines Jr. argued in 1994 that tax havens helped the U.S. Treasury, which helps explain Washington's tolerance. Under EU pressure, Ireland closed the double Irish to new users in 2014 with a grace period to 2020, and in 2016 the European Commission ruled Apple had received illegal state aid and ordered €13 billion repaid; Apple and Ireland disputed the ruling. Replacements followed: the Single Malt via Malta and the Capital Allowances for Intangible Assets scheme, the Green Jersey. Apple's 2015 restructuring lifted Irish GDP 33.4% in a year, which economists dubbed leprechaun economics.

• By 2010 the scheme was shielding $100 billion a year for companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Pfizer.
• The EU calculated Apple's effective tax rate on European profits fell from 1% in 2003 to 0.005% in 2014.
• The Central Bank of Ireland introduced modified GNI, or GNI*, in 2017 because GDP was inflated by 62%.
• The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's GILTI tax let firms blend high and low tax income, allowing effective rates of 0% to 2.5% via Ireland.
• Microsoft moved more than $52 billion of intellectual property into Ireland in 2019 alone.

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In 2021 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the Pandora Papers: 11.9 million documents, 2.9 terabytes, from 14 offshore service providers, with files dating from the 1970s to 2020. The leak exposed the offshore dealings of 35 current and former world leaders, more than 400 public officials from nearly 100 countries and over 100 billionaires, against an estimated $5.6 trillion to $32 trillion in global offshore wealth. Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš was found to have used an undeclared offshore company to buy £12 million of French Riviera property, and Kenya's Uhuru Kenyatta, who demanded public asset declarations, was linked with six family members to 13 offshore companies.

The files showed how shell companies sever an asset from its owner. Azerbaijan's ruling Aliyev family sold a London office block to the UK Crown Estate for £66 million, a £31 million profit, and another shell bought a £33 million property for President Ilham Aliyev's 11-year-old son. Tony and Cherie Blair bought a £6.45 million London building by acquiring the British Virgin Islands company that owned it, legally avoiding £312,000 in stamp duty. The leak also put Panama's Alcogal and U.S. trust states in the spotlight, and Panama responded by suspending half of its registered companies.

• Jordan's King Abdullah II was revealed to own more than $100 million in homes in Malibu, Washington, London and Ascot through shell companies; Jordan called the reports distorted.
• Panamanian law firm Alcogal set up at least 14,000 shell companies and trusts, more than any other provider in the leak.
• Trusts in South Dakota, Nevada, Delaware, Florida and Texas held at least $1 billion for offshore clients.
• South Dakota law lets a settlor benefit from a trust while legally maintaining the assets are not theirs.
• Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman called the U.S. the largest tax haven, pointing to South Dakota.

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In Colorado's coal fields, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, managed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., ran company towns where miners were paid by the ton, often a 2,200-pound long ton, earned nothing for "dead work" such as timbering, and were paid in scrip. The 1912 fatality rate of 7.06 per 1,000 workers was more than double the national average. In September 1913 the United Mine Workers of America called a strike over seven demands, including union recognition and an eight-hour day, and more than 10,000 evicted people moved into tent colonies at the canyon mouths. The Baldwin-Felts agency swept the camps with searchlights and an armored car with a machine gun, nicknamed the Death Special.

When Colorado ran out of money for the National Guard, Governor Elias Ammons left behind Troop A, largely made up of mine guards. On April 20, 1914, the day after the Ludlow colony celebrated Orthodox Easter, a daylong firefight ended with militiamen burning the tents. Camp leader Louis Tikas was struck with a rifle butt by Lieutenant Karl Linderfelt and later found shot in the back, and two women and 11 children died in a cellar beneath a burning tent. Armed miners waged a Ten Day War until President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops, and Rockefeller hired Ivy Lee, a pioneer of modern public relations.

• Families dug cellars under their tents to escape gunfire, the same pits where the women and children were trapped.
• The bodies of Tikas and two other captives lay by the railroad tracks for three days.
• More than 400 strikers were arrested and union leader John R. Lawson was convicted of murder, later overturned, while all 22 court-martialed guardsmen were acquitted.
• A 1996 dig by the Ludlow Collective found burn patterns and bullet trajectories that corroborated the miners' accounts.
• On Lee's advice, Rockefeller toured the camps, attended social events and set up a company union.

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The Hummer began as the M998 Humvee, built by AM General after the U.S. military issued specs in 1979 for a tactical vehicle that could climb 60-degree slopes and follow tank tracks. It was more than seven feet wide, with 16 inches of ground clearance and the drivetrain pushed up into a tunnel splitting the cabin. In 1990, while filming Kindergarten Cop in Oregon, Arnold Schwarzenegger saw an Army convoy and lobbied AM General for a street version; he bought the first two when it launched in 1992. In December 1999 General Motors bought the brand, renamed the original the H1, and added the H2 and later the smaller H3.

The H2's gross vehicle weight rating topped 8,500 pounds, making it a Class 3 truck exempt from passenger car safety rules and CAFE fuel economy tracking, at about 10 miles per gallon in the city. When gas hit $4 in 2008, demand collapsed. GM's 2009 bankruptcy deal to sell Hummer to China's Sichuan Tengzhong for a reported $150 million died in February 2010 without Beijing's approval, and the last H3 left Shreveport, Louisiana on May 24, 2010, for an Avis fleet order. After a 40-day strike in 2019, GM put $2.2 billion into its Detroit-Hamtramck plant and revived the name as the electric GMC Hummer EV.

• As a Class 3 truck, early H2s lacked standard child safety locks, child seat tethers, stability control and side curtain airbags.
• GM required Hummer dealers to build showrooms with oversized half Quonset hut roofs.
• By 2006 the brand sold in 33 countries, with H2 assembly in Kaliningrad, Russia, and Team Hummer won its class at the 2005 Baja 1000.
• Utah's Raser Technologies pitched a plug-in hybrid Hummer at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show aiming for 100 miles per gallon.
• The new Hummer EV, developed under Camaro revival engineer Al Oppenheiser, weighs over 9,000 pounds and debuted with a LeBron James Super Bowl ad.

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In 1886 Chicago, the push for an eight-hour workday brought more than 300,000 workers nationwide off the job on May 1. Two days later, police fired into strikers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant, killing at least two. Anarchists led by August Spies, editor of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, called a rally at Haymarket Square for May 4; Spies had a call to arms struck from the flyers, and 20,000 new ones were printed. Mayor Carter Harrison judged the rainy rally peaceful and went home, but Inspector John Bonfield then marched 176 officers toward the speakers' wagon, and a dynamite bomb thrown from an alley killed Officer Mathias J. Degan.

The firefight that followed, with heavy friendly fire, left seven police officers and an estimated four to eight civilians dead. With no idea who threw the bomb, State's Attorney Julius Grinnell tried eight anarchists on the theory that their speeches and writings had inspired the unknown bomber, before Judge Joseph Gary and a hand-picked jury. All eight were convicted, seven sentenced to death. Louis Lingg killed himself with a smuggled blasting cap, and Spies, Albert Parsons, George Engel and Adolf Fischer were hanged on November 11, 1887. In 1893 Governor John Peter Altgeld pardoned the three survivors and lost his career for it.

• Only two of the eight defendants, Samuel Fielden and Spies, were at the rally when the bomb exploded.
• Oscar Neebe got 15 years, apparently for trying to revive the shuttered Arbeiter-Zeitung.
• Historian Timothy Messer-Kruse, after studying the trial transcripts, argues the proceedings were less anomalous for 1886 than long believed.
• The 1889 police statue in Haymarket Square was hit by a streetcar in 1927 and blown up twice by the Weather Underground, then moved inside the Chicago Police Academy.
• In 1889 the Second International adopted May 1 to honor the Haymarket martyrs, creating International Workers' Day.

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In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and Indonesia posted growth of 8% to 12% a year, drawing a flood of short-term "hot money" from foreign investors. Their currencies were pegged to the U.S. dollar, so local companies borrowed heavily in dollars without hedging. Then China and Japan devalued, semiconductor prices fell, and Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve raised rates, dragging the pegged currencies up and making Asian exports expensive. On July 2, 1997, one day after Hong Kong was handed back to China, Thailand's central bank ran out of reserves and floated the baht, and it crashed.

Panic spread to Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea. The IMF assembled rescue packages starting at $40 billion, tied to structural adjustment programs that demanded spending cuts and sky-high interest rates. Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad rejected the IMF, blamed speculators such as George Soros, and imposed capital controls, while Hong Kong bought billions in stocks to burn short sellers. The slump in Asian demand pushed oil to $11 a barrel, helping trigger Russia's 1998 default and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, and Asia's later hoarding of U.S. Treasuries helped cheapen the credit behind the 2008 housing bubble.

• The Indonesian rupiah fell from about 2,600 to more than 14,000 per dollar, and riots in May 1998 forced Suharto out after 31 years.
• Malaysia made offshore ringgit trading illegal and barred foreign portfolio money from leaving the country for at least a year.
• Hong Kong pushed overnight interest rates as high as 280% and later sold the shares it bought for a large profit.
• China held its dollar peg and was shielded by a non-convertible capital account, while Singapore used a slow managed depreciation.
• IMF demands for transparency pushed Southeast Asian business away from the trust-based "bamboo network" toward Western-style corporate governance.

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When NAFTA took effect on January 1, 1994, Mexico was a favorite of foreign investors, but outgoing president Carlos Salinas de Gortari's government spent heavily to help his chosen successor, Luis Donaldo Colosio, and the current account deficit reached about 7% of GDP. To keep capital flowing, the Treasury shifted from peso-denominated Cetes to tesobonos, short-term bonds repayable in US dollars, and Chase Manhattan alone held an estimated $1.5 billion in Mexican securities. The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas and Colosio's assassination in Tijuana in March drove money out, and the Bank of Mexico spent its dollar reserves defending the peso's band rather than raise rates in an election year.

On December 20, 1994, 19 days after Ernesto Zedillo took office, the government devalued the peso; a tesobono auction then drew no buyers, and on December 22 the peso was allowed to float, falling from 3.40 to 7.20 per dollar. Panic spread across emerging markets as the tequila effect. With Congress refusing a rescue, Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan turned to the Exchange Stabilization Fund within a $50 billion international package, and the US loans returned a $600 million profit. In Mexico, GDP shrank 6.2% in 1995, inflation hit 52% and extreme poverty rose from 21% to 37%.

• The package combined $20 billion from the US Treasury, $17.8 billion from the IMF and $10 billion from the Bank for International Settlements.
• Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs co-chair, was scrutinized by the House Committee on Financial Services over the firm's Mexican exposure.
• Unemployment rose from 3.9% to 7.4%, and real wages fell an estimated 25% to 35%.
• Urban workers were hit harder than rural households, with financial sector incomes down 48% against 17% in agriculture.
• Infant mortality rose 7% in 1996 as families cut spending on health care and nutrition.