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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: accountclosed who wrote (36572)	11/17/1998 4:02:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

"Mike Milken died for our sins"? I have actually heard this from other people. I don't know the facts, but I do know my RICO, so would be interested to learn. CB

To: accountclosed who wrote (36572)	11/17/1998 5:58:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

AR, Ah, you've read the books, but I know Mike. Or, as The Grateful Dead sang, "You know better but I know him." <G> I agree with nearly all you say, up to a point. First, I have to say that I hate junk bonds. Always have, always will. I liked Mike Milken, who let me use his name to set up some job interviews while I was at Wharton (the firm I went with was not one of those where I dropped his name <G>), and Drexel was a major broker for me in every trading job I held. i would have no problem with Milken being arrested if the laws were applied in the least bit fairly. What he did was to arrange for some accounting flim flam and fraudulent reporting. That is very dangerous. Similar to when the hedge fund managers hide trades in their desk drawer. I hate that and think he should be slapped a bit for doing it. I do not consider it minor. But it is not mass murder, either. Drexel, failing to supervise, was total prosecutorial malfeasance, IMHO. Are they supposed to hide a bug on the guy 24 hours a day? However, compare Mike's actions to those of Salami Brothers. They tried to rig the securities trading of the sovereign govt. of The United States. Salami is still in business. Drexel isn't. That is like giving a lethal injection to a drunk driver while sending Charlie Manson home on his own recognisance. <G> I hate drunk driving, but let's get real. Mike messed with the powers that be. Drexel came out of nowhere and took complete control of the jumk market. He even used his contacts at Wharton to commission studies that showed that junk bond investing always beat investing in higher quality issues (a real crock, but the scummy professors believed it after they cooked their numbers. <G>) When old line firms set up shop against him, he kicked their butts. However, knowing that, he was no dummy. He should have been squeaky clean. If you make enemies, and he did, you can't give them the rope to hang you. BTW, I am still mad at him for one deal where we were competing for an audience on different coasts. I was the keynote speaker at a First Boston portfolio managers' conference while he was running a get together in L.A. When he announced his keynote speaker, it was Raquel Welch. Hell, I didn't even want to listen to me when I could be listening, or, rather, watching her. <G> MB