Want to Spend $1 Billion? It's Not So Easy

April 28, 2007 — -- At $25 million per year, Alex Rodriguez is the highest paid baseball player in America. In order to match the earnings of James Simon, though, A-Rod will have to play until he is 100.

Simon, the top hedge fund manager in America, made $1.7 billion in one year. According to the hedge fund industry magazine, Alpha, the Top 25 hedge fund managers made a combined $14 billion last year.

Exactly how much is that? Well, it's more than Jordan's national income. To accumulate that much wealth would be roughly the equivalent of earning $443 per second -- every second -- of every day. Plus, it's enough to pay New York City's 80,000 teachers for three years.

Hedge fund managers make huge bets on stocks and commodities going up and down, and take a huge cut of the profits.

"They buy when nobody's willing to buy," said Stephen Brown, who teaches courses in financial markets at New York University. "They sell when no one is willing to sell. They take a great risk so they deserve high returns for doing so."

Alpha profiles three hedge fund managers who made more than $1 billion. What can one do with more than $1 billion a year?

"World News" asked Bloomingdale's personal shopper Marian Goodman, who responded with a question, "How much time do you have?"

Goodman suggested a nice set of Pratisi sheets. "This particular case, a king set of sheets, is $1,800, and we can build on it from there."

When we entered a Gristede's grocery store and asked store manager Joe Ditri how much it would cost for everything in the store, he said, "Probably about $2 million … here."

It turns out, $1 billion is hard to spend.