Free Mike!

[Nathan Newman]

Nice overall point about how policing on the margins maintains the integrity
of a rigged racket.  But just in case you are serious, it is worth analyzing
why Milken really deserves jail.  You make the case that Milken funded
marginal risky investments when many others would not.  But is that a good
thing?  You cite MCI-  MCI was a massive unionbusting firm that grew based
on regulatory subsidy by the FCC and did little more than helped usher in
lower rates for big business customers at the expense of higher costs for
local phone service.

I can and have made a case for why big lumbering banks like Bank of America
in its heyday where much better for working class folks (even if tilted
inevitably to the wealthy) since it tied the savings and fates of average
people into the success of the overall economy.  As the days of Savings and
Loans and regional banks have given way to junk bonds, "securitization" and
venture capital, the money game has become even more starkly an internal
circulation of capital among the elite.

Hell, to give a personal example-  when I was in Vegas, financing of the
casinos had just recently shifted from mob and Teamster pension funds to
Milken-financed junk bonds.   The result was unquestionably a harsher,
anti-worker management.

Do you have any argument for how junk bond financing improved the lives of
average folks over the older, conservative banking approach?

Nathan Newman

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 9:53 AM
Subject: Free Mike!

Today's Feed daily is my plea to Free Mike Milken!
<http://www.feedmag.com/templates/select_template.php3?a_id=1581>.
Though they wouldn't let me use those three words as the closing line.

Doug