of course, boesky was guilty. there was going to be no defense. all he had was bargaining power. who could he deliver? levine was a fish, boesky was a shark. who is the whale they re going to catch? i don t know. drexel burnham? well, that s possible. in the middle of all this is drexel burnham lambert. until a few years ago, a little-known wall street firm. and then, it shot to the top by specializing in so-called junk bonds. high interest but also high risk. drexel and the head of its junk bond department michael milken made a deal with ivan boesky to make millions of dollars illegally. california company wicks came to milken s firm and said it was planning a takeover. boesky bought the stock before it went up, shared the profits with milken s firm, but milken betrayed his client, charged a million-dollar fee and secretly
because it s so risky, those ious carry high interest rates, and they re called junk bonds. you may not have heard of michael milken, of the investment firm of drexel incorporated, but this 40-year-old wall street whiz is said to be the most powerful financier in america. he brought respectability to low rated junk bonds and then used the money to finance corporate raids and takeovers. without mike milken, t. boone pickens couldn t have raided gulf, 76 and phillips petrolium. he said if you really want to take over gulf, it s going to cost you $13 billion. i said, yeah, i get it. and he said, i can get the $13 billion. he s the guy that t. boone pickens goes to and most people haven t heard of him. that s the way he likes it. he doesn t care about publicity and pride. he just cares about doing deals and having power. he was this shadowy howard hughes-like figure that you never saw, you just heard. it was milken s genius that