Written by John Lounsbury
This week President Trump pardoned Michael Milken who was a major wall street player convicted of fraud for activities on Wall Street during the 1980s. Milken is euphemistically known as the “junk bond king”.
Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.
This video is an interview of Benjamin Stein in the early 1990s, the author of a book “License to Steal” – subtitled The Untold Story of Michael Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation. The book reveals how Michael Milken sold $200 billion of junk bonds, turned corporate America upside down, killed dozens of S&Ls, cost the taxpayers billions, and gave America a push towards the longest recession in history which eventually arrived in 2007.
From Wikipedia:
Michael Robert Milken (born July 4, 1946) is an American financier and philanthropist. He is noted for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds (“junk bonds”),[3] and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws.[4] Since his release from prison, he has also become known for his charitable giving.[5][6][7][8] Milken was pardoned by President Donald Trump on February 18, 2020.
Milken was indicted for racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 in an insider trading investigation. As the result of a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to securities and reporting violations but not to racketeering or insider trading. Milken was sentenced to ten years in prison, fined $600 million, and permanently barred from the securities industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission. His sentence was later reduced to two years for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and for good behavior.[9] Since his release from prison, Milken has funded medical research.[10]
This video rambles at times. For example, you can skip the first 20 minutes which is primarily about Benjamin Stein’s personal history and not miss anything about Milken.
But through the rambling you will learn about who was involved in the vast network dealing with junk bonds in the 1980s, including the infamous Charles Keating. The junk bond fiasco of the 1980s was intimately involved with the S&L scandal of that era. So listen to everything after the first 20 minutes and you will get a valuable history lesson of the early stages of the decay of US finance that is still impacting us today.
Source: YouTube.
.
include(“/home/aleta/public_html/files/ad_openx.htm”); ?>
