Dangerous Dreamers: The Financial Innovators from Charles Merrill to Michael Milken

Although Sobel ( The Big Board ) records such ``innovations'' as the Merrill Lynch small-investors-in-volume sales approach, Louis Wolfson's ``conglomerate'' pioneering and the corporate raidings of Boone Pickens, Sobel's liveliest concern here is the controversial ``junk-bond'' market of the 1980s and its star performer, Michael Milken. In a notably balanced chronicle, Sobel weighs government pressure (e.g., Milken was U.S. Attorney Rudolph Guiliani's ``ultimate target'') in the demise of Drexel Burnham Lambert against the junk-bond deregulation connection in the S & L debacles. Sobel also points to Milken's deft facilitation through pooled financing of still-flourishing business start-ups, and he implicitly questions the so-called ``Fatico hearings'' which allow a sentencing judge, as in Milken's case, to admit the presentation of evidence without an indictment. (May)