I'm Ann Bocock and welcome to Between the Covers Summer Series with the spotlight on South Florida.

Jay Newman is a former hedge fund portfolio manager.

He's been called a legend on Wall Street famous for helping to recover billions in defaulted debt from the government of Argentina.

He has a new book, the title is Undermoney.

Welcome, Jay.

And thank you so much.

You know you're on to something when Nelson DeMille calls your book Nothing Short of and I'm quoting Jaw Dropping.

So, congrats Congratulations on that and tell me this this is a thriller but it's not your typical good versus evil thriller so without doing spoilers could you give me an overview of the plot absolutely a group of American patriots decide that they want to change the world and they do that and this is not much of a spoiler because it happens in the first few pages they manage to pilfer $2.4 billion dollars of US government money that's airdropped over the Middle East and they use that to get one of their members elected to hire office the key thing is that in order to do that they take over a corrupt hedge fund and in order to move their money around they fall into league with a Russian private military company a lot like the Wagner Group that's currently working for Vladamir Putin in Ukraine.

This book apparently is a little much more timely than one would have thought when you were starting to write it then.

Uh it's I I I've been shocked actually in a in a that reality caught up to fiction so quickly.

Um I thought it would happen but not this fast.

There's a lot going on in the book.

We have, like you said, there's a hedge fund.

There's money laundering.

There's market maneuvering.

So, it's a financial thriller and it is a novel but you were 40 years on Wall Street.

So, in addition to everything I just said, is it possible it's a cautionary tale?

Um it's intended as a cautionary tale because what it what I I meant to peel back the curtain on having spent 40 years on Wall Street and in 20 years at a major hedge fund is to show how power and money and political power are all inextricably linked and that's where the title comes from.

It's it's under money which I define and by the way, I want to claim that this is a new word in the English language.

It's money that flows invisibly but influences people and events.

I was going to ask what the title meant so thank you very much for explaining it.

The title is Undermoney.

So, you spent 40 years on Wall Street.

Why did you want to become a novelist?

And then why did you want to tell this story?

Well, I I I spent most of my career as you mentioned earlier chasing debt owed by various countries in in developing countries around the world and I saw a lot of things that are untoward.

I you know is always intended to discover who is doing what to whom, how to make investments in difficult places and I thought about writing nonfiction when I retired but I realized that would be a snooze.

Nobody would read it.

So, I figured that the way to communicate some of these ideas would be through fiction much more efficiently and with an entertainment involved.

Definitely with entertainment involved.

I I'm curious, does money and I'm talking big money like we're talking about in this book, does it change people?

Um it absolutely does change people.

Um I think I've certainly seen that in my career.

People who all of a sudden go from having nothing to having billions and billions of dollars.

Um and there's been actually scientific research on this that money changes your brain.

It it changes your brain.

There are lots of things that change your brain.

The epigenetic effects of of experience.

Um but money is kind of special because one thing it does is it enables people to create a bubble around themselves.

We all want to create bubbles.

We want to protect our friends and our family and our lives from you know intrusion but when you have the kinds of money, the billions of billions of dollars that that have been accumulated over the last couple of decades, it changes the minds and the way of thinking of lots of people.

Undermoney is a novel.

It's a financial thriller but are you giving away any secrets that maybe people would not be happy to hear about?

Uh there this so the the the funny thing that I discovered as I was writing is that every time I thought I was revealing a secret I and I would do research on it I would realize that it was already out there it might not be easy to find the information but it was out there so in a in a strange way it's fiction but it's reality and and that was that was a bit of a puzzle for me my limited financial knowledge and you know in disclosure here I didn't never took a business class so what here I know about Wall Street, you invest in something you think is going to go up.

Well, not so much in your book, you have characters who do the opposite.

They're betting that something goes down.

Is it different rules?

Um this the the characters in this book once they once they steal this initial pot of money realize that even this several billion dollars is not enough to do what they want to do.

Uh so they fall into league with a this Russian private military contractor to make things happen and very often the things they're making happen are disasters that as you as you say create negative results they enable people to go short which is just a way of profiting when things when assets like stocks and bonds go down and that's a lot of what they're doing.

They're actually making things happen in a negative way to profit from that.

So a financial thriller here we go is probably scarier than the the murder mysteries.

Um it's it's I I find the the whole environment to be rather scary.

Uh I think the amount the ability of people to make vast sums very quickly and use those those sums to influence politics is is really a scary prospect and that's the world we live in today.

And before we get to our lightning round so we learn a little bit more about you.

You did mention in the beginning that the figure I believe you said was 2 point four billion dollars that was stolen and if memory serves, isn't that the actual amount that you recovered from Argentina?

It is.

Okay.

Just check just checking that my research is okay.

Now, let me get to your.

You're you're keeping me honest.

Let's get to a lightning round so we can learn a little bit about you, Jay.

First, if you hadn't spent 40 years on Wall Street, I would have liked to what?

Draw and paint.

Really?

I like that.

Okay.

One thing I learned about myself during the pandemic.

What a great time it was to write.

Who is someone that inspires you someone you truly admire Tom Wolf Tom Wolf the paint all all of his work bonfire of the vanities the painted word his ability to extract social morays and and turn them into fiction just just stunningly brilliant and I I will take him aside here and say I think he's fabulous so I I we definitely agree about that what was the least favorite part about starting to write?

Um not knowing where I was going.

Uh I'm I'm more disciplined now in terms of developing a plot because I have the characters but at the beginning, I just had the idea of under money and a friend of mine who had been a in in the military and that's really that's all I had.

So, kind of feeling my way in the dark not knowing quite where I was headed.

Um it was exciting but it was scary.

The favorite part about writing.

Rereading it and thinking how did I do that?

Well, apparently, you do it really well.

We can just ask Nelson DeMille about that and I don't know if I'm giving it away but it appears there will be another book.

Yes, I'm working on the sequel to to Undermoney, the the title is Uncertainty and I've got a third in mind, tentative title, although I don't have even an outline for it is unthinkable.

So, I've got three, the story arc in three acts.

All financial thrillers?

All financial thrillers and all most of the same characters, at least the ones that survive.

Jay Newman, thank you so much.

Anne, thank you very very much.

A pleasure to be here.

I'm Anne Bocock.

I'll see you on the next Between the Covers.