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the Maxwell Plum era when the 60s on Second was the glamour address—a building that was, he says as a fond memory, full of “actresses, models, and euro trash.” (It would shortly become the Studio 54 era, where Epstein, who has, proudly, even militantly, never had drink or taken any drugs, was a regular). If on one side of Wall Street there were the salesmen (the Wolf of Wall Street model), on the other side there was a new sort of finance type able to embrace a level of acute abstraction. “In the past,” says Epstein, “investing was all about reputations and relationships. You invested in a company on the basis of who was running it. Did they have integrity? Were they married? Good family men? It was a ‘50s mentality. But in the mid ‘70s options started to be traded. In essence, the first formal derivatives. The movement of this instrument is not directly attached to the stock price. The world of investing began turning from relationships to math. In a sense I didn’t really make money as much as I tried to create it. This was intellectual activity of a fairly high order.” Intellectual activity aside, he met Helen Gurley Brown and she made him Cosmopolitan Magazine’s Bachelor of the Month in 1980. “What,” I ask, “was your social life like?” “Well, I was a playboy.” “That’s all? Not looking to get married?” “No. Never. I never wanted to get married. I enjoyed sex. I adore women. I wanted freedom. I was HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022911