Dangerous Dreamers
The Financial Innovators from Charles Merrill to Michael Milken
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- $33.99
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- $33.99
Publisher Description
In this fast-paced account, Robert Sobel analyzes the causes of the "Junk Decade" against a backdrop of incisive portraits of the perpetrators of some of the most dizzying and daring financial machinations the world has ever seen. Dangerous Dreamers is the story of clever scoundrels and brilliant innovators, such as Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. It is also the story of the big banks, the pension and mutual funds, the insurance companies, and the S & Ls, who had a critical role in this period of financial instability.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although Sobel ( The Big Board ) records such ``innovations'' as the Merrill Lynch small-investors-in-volume sales approach, Louis Wolfson's ``conglomerate'' pioneering and the corporate raidings of Boone Pickens, Sobel's liveliest concern here is the controversial ``junk-bond'' market of the 1980s and its star performer, Michael Milken. In a notably balanced chronicle, Sobel weighs government pressure (e.g., Milken was U.S. Attorney Rudolph Guiliani's ``ultimate target'') in the demise of Drexel Burnham Lambert against the junk-bond deregulation connection in the S & L debacles. Sobel also points to Milken's deft facilitation through pooled financing of still-flourishing business start-ups, and he implicitly questions the so-called ``Fatico hearings'' which allow a sentencing judge, as in Milken's case, to admit the presentation of evidence without an indictment.
