The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 6 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Friedman: Drexel and Milken Created the Original New-Issue High-Yield Bond Market
“There was no such thing as a new issue high yield bond before Mike and Drexel. The only high yield bonds were fallen angels, investment grade bonds that had been downgraded.”
Friedman: Drexel's 1980s high-yield market fueled massive private equity expansion
“The first three years that I was there, from 1984 to 1987, were a period of exponential growth, exponential creativity. Explosion in the size of the market that we were creating and the characteristics of it, and explosion in the private equity market because …”
Friedman: Private high-yield issuance surpassed public high-yield around 2019
“Two or three years ago was the first year that the high yield market privately issued high yield exceeded publicly issued high yield.”
Friedman: 1990s bond prices collapsed despite an expanding US economy
“The prices get absurdly low on pretty good credits, and it's also a time when the US economy was recovering from a recession in the late eighties, so you had an economy pointed up and bond prices going down, and it made no sense.”
Friedman: Fed COVID facilities worked mostly through signaling, rarely requiring funding
“Most of the programs that they established to buy securities were never funded at any material degree because the market reacted almost instantaneously and said, ah, the Fed's going to be there to the rescue, so I'm okay.”
Friedman: Drexel Under Milken Taught How to Buy Businesses Without Capital
“I worked in the magical world of Mike Milken in 1984 to 1990, which was just an unbelievable place. It was a great place to learn how to buy a business if you didn't have any money, because we were financing people buying businesses who didn't have that much m…”