The Ledger, every show

“When we asked us specifically about the dive in a low milk and he acknowledged the fact that Lowell would not have been indicted if it wasn't to bring pressure on his brother.”

“None of which, and this is why I go in great detail in the book so people understand how in many ways ridiculous it is, none of which had ever been the subject of a criminal prosecution before or since.”

“So Mike was an attractive target because he really wasn't liked by a lot of people in the business round table and in the established firms. He was getting a lot of publicity. He was very successful. And so people complained to the SEC, they complained to Cong…”

“The prosecutors at the time had told the principals and the lawyers for Princeton Newport that they're going to run over them. They're going to destroy them unless they help them against Michael Milken and another Case that was under investigation at the time,…”

“Part of the deal with the government was they had to get rid of Michael Milken Not only did they have to get rid of Michael Milken, but under the deal they made with the government, no employee of Drexel was allowed to discuss any business matter with Mike.”

“When the judge who sentenced Mike did an analysis of the economic effect of everything Mike led to, put to five different things. She found that the economic effect of four of the things he led to was zero. And the economic effect of the fifth was about 280,00…”

“These young prosecutors that are going after you, they said, they're not mostly evil or bad people. They are young people with no life experience. They don't understand what it means if they're wrong. They believe they are avenging angels in some ways.”

“We actually found things to plead to, none of which had ever been subject to criminal prosecution before, many of which hadn't probably even been enforced as regulatory violations before, but we found things that he could admit to.”

“Interesting enough, when the judge assessed the economic damage to the marketplace from everything Michael pled to, included on the three counts that related to Bosque, that the total economic effect of these violations was zero. Not one penny was lost.”

“What had happened is, to prove they could still get deals done, they were taking a lot of securities that they couldn't sell into inventory, and they were financing it by issuing commercial paper in the commercial paper market. So in financial parlance, they w…”

“And she gave him a ten-year sentence, which number one, negated what we thought was a cap of five years. Because she gave him two years on five counts to Z serve consecutively, not concurrently.”

“The judge who sentenced Mike, who held the Fatico hearing, wrote a letter to the parole commission on Mike's behalf, indicating that she held the Fatico hearing, and she did not believe that any further wrongdoing other than what he pled to could be shown, eve…”

“And then as time passed, and some of the same lies kept getting repeated, you went to jail for insider trading, or you went to jail for fraud in the bond, none of which is true.”

“I think the other reason they were called drunk junk is because when Mike and Drexler became so successful in this area, other firms that really couldn't compete with them tried to kind of let people think that these bonds, there's something wrong with this, t…”

“Of bonds for companies, and companies such as Ted Turner, Steve Wynn, MCI Communications Pulte Homes, all these companies that could never gotten financing before were now able to get financing and grow, and the market grew from that.”

“Mike's deal that he'd made from Drexel at a time when it was a very small market was that something like 30, 30 some odd percent of the profits of his department would go to the bonus pool he could allocate.”

“Ivan Boski was probably the most revered and respected risk arbitrageur on Wall Street. He had accounts with every firm. In fact, he did very little trading with Drexel. He was probably the largest equity buyer of securities of stocks at the time for any firm …”

“The idea of a new issue of a high-yield security, our new issue of debt security for a company that Could not get an investment grade was unheard of when Mike came to the market.”

“The firm was out of business before the first witness was called in the trial, because under RICO, you could create a freezing of assets, and as a financial institution, that's very, very difficult. So, even though Princeton Newport case was reversed on appeal…”

“He met with me twice. Never asked me one question about things he said about me in the book, some of which are not true.”

“Where traditionally back then the idea was, if you're under investigation, don't talk to the media, don't do anything. You have to have a media policy. You have to basically tell your story. But I would say the number one advice that I would give that we did n…”

“You have really no rights as a person under investigation. You don't have a right to ask them questions. When they subpoena documents, you don't get a copy of the subpoenas documents they get from other people. They subpoena people to appear in front of grand …”

“He was the largest really purchaser and seller of equities on New York Stock Exchange, larger than any institution at the time.”

“I think there were 12 transactions in the indictment. 98 counts.”

“They paid a very large fine. I think they paid six hundred and fifty million dollars out. Part of that went as a criminal penalty, and part of that went to as an SEC disgorgement fund, because they settled with both the SEC and the U.S. Attorney”

“Mike had moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1978, and moved his whole department with him.”