Before there was alleged crypto scamster Sam Bankman-Fried, the harrowing Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff and the rapacious Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, there was Michael Milken.
If you’re old enough to remember, Milken symbolized the so-called “decade of greed,” a slander perpetuated by the left during the 1980s boom. From his perch at the now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert, Milken’s creative use of so-called junk bonds financed a wave of buyouts and led to unmatched Wall Street corruption that destroyed jobs, upended once-great companies and ate at the moral fabric of the nation’s soul.
It’s almost all a lie, of course. The 1980s were a period of unmatched growth thanks to Reaganomics that cut taxes and regulations so successfully that the economic team of Bill Clinton no less emulated such “supply side” methods to keep the Reagan revolution rolling for years. Milken himself deserves accolades for propelling Reagan-era prosperity.
Sure, his use of high-yield junk-bond debt helped fuel the buyout mania of the time. It also enraged the financial establishment as scores of companies that were denied financing turned to Milken and Drexel to grow and prosper. Don’t believe me. Just ask the executives who built empires on Milken’s financial acumen, Ted Turner, John Malone and Rupert Murdoch (my ultimate boss), and many more.
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