The Velocity of Money: A Novel of Wall Street

by Stephen Rhodes, Mark Rolston (Narrator)

Young Manhattan attorney Rick Hansen has ascended to the top of the financial ladder by landing himself a plum position at the blue-chip global investment firm of Wolcott, Fulbright & Company. Here on "the Street, " he is in close proximity to the people who manipulate the power that spins the globe: money. But something is very wrong. His predecessor's shocking suicide begins to look suspiciously like murder. And the deeper Hansen digs, the more evidence he uncovers of a devastating international conspiracy to engineer the biggest market crash since 1929 and reap billions in profits from global financial apocalypse. With the clock ticking down to the zero hour, Rick Hansen discovers he's the only one who can stop a nightmarish Black Friday from dawning -- but only if he is willing to put his own life on the line.

Genres: Finance, Fiction

Audio Cassette

Published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Tricia]

This book is a thriller set on Wall Street during the 90s.

It is a little bit dated but I thought it was pretty good. I thought some of the discussion about how Wall Street operates was really interesting.

I would recommend this book.

[B. Etza]

I don’t know Stephen Rhodes, but I’ve known some people in the same business (legal / finance). It does sound like Mr. Rhodes knows what he’s writing about. “Write what you know”, the adage says, and I think that’s quite correct.
If you want to read Mr. Rhodes, here, for joy and amusement, I wouldn’t recommend it. It uses 10 or 20 words when 3 would suffice, and uses cardboard characters and clichés.
If you want to read it concerning financial plotting and scheming, and greed by big-money types who’re in it for no one except themselves, then I highly recommend this book! Why can’t the small investor compete against computerized millisecond traders? Why did the “flash crash” happen? Why did the crash of 2008-09 happen? Because unethical people are greedy, and put money over more valuable things! The “He who dies with the most toys, wins”, or “He who dies with the most money, wins”, mentality means that for people with poor ethics, money leads to more suffering than it leads to (responsible) pleasures, or other positive things. “The love of money is the root of all evil”, or at least, a LOT of it! It leads to abusing your creditors with multiple bankruptcies, stealing (using eminent domain powers) a little old lady’s house for your limousine parking lot, and fleecing people with non-credentialed, non-productive, and deceptive training courses in “How to Become Rich Like Me”. And then some of these greedy people try and make themselves feel better by voting for (or being!) politicians who will tax you and me some more, “for the poor”, instead of donating their own money to the poor! So this book will help you to understand much of that.
Now again, I don’t know Mr. Rhodes. Perhaps he’s highly moral, ethical, and even spiritually advanced. But I have my dark suspicions, because of “write what you know”, and also because of at least one of the people in this profession that I’ve known. You know, the pursuit of money and power gets to be so all-encompassing, that splitting like $400 K/yr or so, with your ex-wife, for child support, is such an onerous burden, that one would, instead, prefer to go through multiple rounds of acrimonious lawsuits. For you readers out there… for unbalanced or unseasoned people especially… more money does NOT always mean more happiness; it often works in the exact opposite direction! Read and heed!
One more stab, or attempt at clarity: Money (in a free market, in voluntary exchange) is a GOOD thing! I pay you a dollar for a coke, because I value the coke more than a dollar, and you, vice versa. We both “win”. Lawyers can be good “servants of the public good”, in that they can help us be a “society of laws, and not of men” (help enforce the rules, in a non-arbitrary, non-capricious manner). But somewhere in there (and I can’t tell you anywhere nearly exactly where), investments-money-laws become a non-net-productive gambling game, and people get the idea that everything is a zero-sum game. I must make you LOSE so that I can WIN! Real free markets aren’t like that, in the domains of truly benevolent and fair-minded people!
The win-at-any-price zero-sum-game mentality can infect our personal lives. We must steal the other guy’s dignity, so that we can have more dignity for ourselves… Spiritually (ethically) advanced people know that this is a false and destructive idea… Give the other guy some more respect and dignity, and we can ALL have some more of the same! Instead of constantly putting each other down!
And then we can even decide that our ex-wife and our kids (as in, child support) need to “lose”, so that we can “win”, even at the cost of REPEATED expensive and heart-wrenching lawsuits. Beware, money not-equal happiness!!! I have seen it! “All you need, is in your soul”! (Lynyrd Skynyrd).

[Ann]

I loved every page of this epic story. A very detailed and complex story of stock market manipulation, insider trading and cyber warfare to bring down Wall Street, the US economy and ultimately a global recession. Some very advanced terminology used (derivatives, ugh). Most I could follow, some not so much. That said, I love a book that intellectually challenges. A very satisfying ending that spanned several chapters.

[Sean]

Written in the 1990s, this book is like a walk down memory lane, with all of the antiquated technology of the era—pagers, facsimile machines, Cray supercomputers, etc. It's a fun adventure based mostly on Wall Street and a quick read.

[Johnny]

Imagine a financial thriller where the protagonist believes a vast international conspiracy is attempting to bring down the entire stock market using “derivatives.” It almost sounds like you are reading a prelude to the 2008 meltdown. Yet, The Velocity of Money was written by Stephen Rhodes in 1997--before both the “Dot Bomb” of the early millennium and the aforementioned 2008 crisis. The novel touches on both the dangers of programmed trading (an “elephant in the room” which has only been partially addressed as of 2016) and the tricky nature of derivatives which have nothing of true collateral within them (sort of a sub-prime loan for greedy mutual fund managers, if you will). The parenthetical comment about derivatives isn’t technically correct, but Rhodes does use derivatives as the modus operandi of evil, much as we know what the sub-prime loans did to undermine our economic system.

The Velocity of Money opens with the body of a successful Wall Street lawyer dropping from a skyscraper and smashing into a New York City cab. This lets us know why the prestigious (and fictional) Wall Street firm has hired the protagonist. In some ways, the book is like The Firm meets a James Bond plot. The young attorney joined the Wall Street firm to cut back on his working hours and spend more time with his wife, but he finds mysterious material in the detritus of his predecessor and becomes obsessed with the idea that the “suicide” of his predecessor is not what it seems. As his spouse notes, his obsession causes him to work longer hours than before. Is he paranoid or should one take the conspiracy at face value?

Well, since the story is told from a third person omniscient perspective, readers will know pretty quickly whether or not there is a real conspiracy. Our protagonist might actually be about to uncover something else which might damage his firm or get him to “fall”-ow the path of his predecessor for an entirely different reason. Initially, we are unsure, but then Rhodes lines up intriguing pieces of potential evidence for how such a fraud could be perpetrated and wraps them in some assumptions from the attorney.

I was fascinated by the descriptions of a trading floor which was evolving to meet its true electronic future. And there is one point at which some odd programmed trading acts as a monkey wrench in the machinery of the entire stock exchange. The description of the panic caused by early European selling was vivid enough that, as a reader, I almost felt like I needed to get out of the way of all the running around. One quickly gets the sense that Rhodes knows something about the stock market and is giving his readers an inside peek. Readers certainly get some of the varied personalities of successful traders—some reckless, some bold, and some constantly looking for the fly in the ointment.

The Velocity of Money may not quite be the Fail-Safe (Cold War potboiler) or Seven Days in May (yet another Cold War jewel), but for people interested in finance who would like to have that world mixed with mystery, this novel might be just the replacement for those Emma Lathem mysteries that no longer come our way.

[Dustan Woodhouse]

Writing a review 15years later is perhaps not so useful. It was a helpful book in its day, and I am sure there are still useful lessons in it. But much has changed on Wall Street since 1999.