Where I got my PhD, you could drop out after one year, simply having completed the courses of that year, and you'd get the MA.

This is true for my program too, although one year wasn't enough time for me to figure out other things I wanted to do.

you can use this approach as a stepping stone to finance jobs.

I hear this regularly, but I still don't understand how it works. Does this come from networking that happens at top schools, or are there finance companies actively recruiting PhDs? What qualifies as a "top program"? A department well respected in the field or a university famous for other reasons? Is a famous adviser at a poorly-known school better or worse than the reverse?