American Decades
Milken, Michael 1946-
JUNK BOND KING
Outsider.
Michael Milken rivaled Ivan Boesky as the predominant symbol of 1980s-style capitalism, a fitting comparison since the two men worked together and eventually fell together. Milken, like Boesky, was an outsider on Wall Street, a business arena that has been traditionally dominated by upper-crust Ivy League-educated men from a WASP background. What Milken brought to finance was a creative understanding of how to raise money and a single-minded obsession with doing just that.
Obsession.
Michael Milken came from a middle-class Jewish family living in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and graduated in 1968 majoring in business administration, a continuation of his childhood fascination with financial issues. After receiving an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, Milken went to work for Drexel Burnham Lambert. Drexel, if not...
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1980's Business and the Economy
