DEN OF THIEVES by James Stewart

[grassfed]

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,316042,00.html

JUNK BONDAGE

OF THE MANY BOOKS ABOUT WALL STREET WICKEDNESS DURING THE '80S, JAMES STEWART'S BEST-SELLING DEN OF THIEVES IS PROBABLY THE MOST DETAILED AND DIVERTING.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Among ordinary shakedown artists and stickup men, the phrase is axiomatic. Anybody who hasn't the fortitude to survive prison without breaking down or turning stool pigeon has no business knocking off a 7-Eleven, much less contemplating a career in crime. But among the Gucci-clad, Ferrari-driving Wall Street hijackers described in James B. Stewart's consistently fascinating Den of Thieves (Simon & Schuster, $25), no such code of honor survived much past their various indictments. With a few exceptions, no sooner had federal prosecutors and Securities and Exchange Commission investigators put the squeeze on the massive multibillion- dollar inside-trading conspiracy centering around Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken than the self-styled pit bulls of American finance were breaking down in tears and ratting on each other like a group of ninth graders caught with a six-pack. But seeing the mighty crawl is only one of the pleasures of watching Stewart, the Wall Street Journal's front-page editor, chronicle the rise and fall of the junk-bond and leveraged-buyout empires. More disquieting is Stewart's pungent analysis of how and why much of the financial community was so easily taken for a disastrous joyride. Evidently, for example, short guys and leggy bimbos had a lot to do with it. The corporate execs who put up the money for hostile takeovers were encouraged to see themselves as sexual and financial buccaneers. To Milken's operatives, the ideal corporate raider was ''short, unhappily married and insecure. In (Drexel Burnham investment banker Donald) Engel's view, there were only two things that motivated these clients: the next deal, and the next sexual conquest . Corporate America likes women. "Find a hooker and you'll find a client."

At least one knot of Princeton, N.J.-based conspirators bragged before trial that their scheme was too complex to be understood by a jury. Sixty-three guilty counts later, they got a big surprise. After all, the criminality of insider trading is not so hard to grasp; you don't have to be a professional gambler to know you can get shot for playing poker with a marked deck. As the world knows, Boesky and the rest lived with a tasteless ostentation that made Scrooge McDuck look like a Benedictine monk (with the singular exception of Milken, who hoarded his pile). Even so, the details- Boesky's arriving by helicopter at a seagoing bar mitzvah on the rented QE2 the very night before agreeing to become a government informant, for example-are endlessly enjoyable. Equally persuasive is Stewart's analysis of how reckless and finally stupid it all was-essentially a classic pyramid scheme based upon the touching human illusion that time and chance happeneth not to the Wall Street anointed. All proving that there may be no fool like a fool with an MBA.

Boesky told Mooradian (his office manager) to be at work every morning promptly at 7 a.m., when his own limousine would pull up to the building entrance. If Boesky wasn't going to be in the office, he'd call in at 7:01; if no one answered, he'd fly into a rage. Once, years later, Boesky called in when a fire drill was in progress. No one answered the phone immediately. The next day a memo appeared on everyone's desk. ''Yesterday at 3:15 p.m., I called in,'' the memo began. ''My phone rang 23 times. I understand there was a fire alarm. Certainly, I don't want you to risk your lives. But I extend my appreciation to those of you who stayed behind.'' One morning Boesky's employees arrived at the office to discover a Wierton terrier puppy scampering about the premises. Boesky had bought the pet as a surprise for Seema (his wife), but she had banned the terrier from the house. So Boesky said the dog would live at the office, and his chauffeur, Johnny Ray, could take care of it at night and on weekends. Soon Boesky and the puppy were inseparable. He even took the dog along to meetings with investors. Just a week later, Lessman and others heard a shriek from Boesky's office. They rushed in to discover a stricken look on Boesky's face. The puppy looked confused. In a pile right in front of Boesky's desk, on his spotless beige carpeting, the dog had demonstrated convincingly that it wasn't yet housebroken. Boesky wiped up the mess. No one ever saw the dog again.

[Truth2Tell]

1. Den of Theives...

[Jackpine Radical]

2. The most amazing thing to me is how we've set up our system

in such a way that these high-functioning psychopaths, these "snakes in suits," as Robert Hare called them, are invariably the ones who float to the top.

[peacetalksforall]

3. "All proving that there may be no fool like a fool with an MBA."

You can almost say that the MBA's and the ones with Doctorates have ruined our country.

Dr. Rice and Dr. Kissinger - two of the famous ones.

There is probably only 1 out of of 100 Wall Street smartaxxxx's who doesn't have an MBA.

What we don't know about our President who got his MBA at Harvard is that he got his doctorate in Loyalty-Reward and Betrayal-Revenge from his heritage or his psychosis.

I want to read the Stewart book someday. If we are all without a job, I hope the library can stay open.