ABSTRACT

Thrifts were created to take in retail deposits and provide long-term, fixed-rate mortgages for residential homeowners. Drexel aggressively courted thrifts and recruited them as both issuers and purchasers of junk bonds. The result of all this deregulation was an S&L industry awash in high-cost money, chasing too few low-risk investments. In fact, government played a remarkably unhelpful role in worst public scandal-ridden decade of greed. Michael Milken was widely blamed for the recession that set in by 1990, as well as the savings and loan debacle; truly, he was "the embodiment of a decade of greed". Moviemaker and conspiracy buff Oliver Stone's classic movie Wall Street, which debuted in 1987, almost immediately became an iconic symbol for the Decade of Greed on Wall Street. Michael Milken lawyers undoubtedly feared that revelations about his obscene salary would hurt him at trial, and that he risked being punished for the era of greed rather than his actual crimes.