Word: junking
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...isolation and intensity of the movie-house experience. One such story is The Times of Harvey Milk, winner of this year's Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Its plot--all-American guy shoots the mayor of San Francisco and a gay-activist supervisor, then goes to trial pleading that junk food made him do it--was as farfetched and compelling as that of any paranoiac political thriller. Herewith, reports on three more documentaries that transcend the newsreel...
...term junk bonds conjures up an image of useless certificates sitting in a pile in someone's garage. Nonetheless, junk bonds, which originally were issued mostly by companies in financial trouble, have taken on a slick new role as a money-raising device for corporate-takeover artists and entrepreneurial companies. The amount of junk-bond issues has grown from $3 billion in 1982 to $14.3 billion last year...
...proliferation of the paper, though, is causing both moneymen and legislators to wonder whether the junk pile could collapse. Last week New Mexico Republican Pete Domenici introduced a Senate bill that would halt the feverish growth by putting a moratorium until the end of the year on most takeovers financed by junk bonds. The bill could put a stop to deals like Corporate Raider T. Boone Pickens' plan to acquire Unocal with some $3 billion in junk bonds, one of the largest issues ever proposed...
...deal maker behind Pickens and most other corporate sharks is the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, which controls nearly 75% of the junk- bond market. Drexel's Michael Milken, 39, developed today's market in junk bonds almost single-handed after researching them in 1969 as an M.B.A. student at Wharton School. Milken showed that junk bonds defaulted only slightly more often than prestige certificates, yet paid interest rates 3% to 4% higher. During the late 1970s, he patiently persuaded such big investors as pension funds and banks that the bonds were safe, and Drexel began issuing mounds of them...
Critics charge that today's euphoria in the junk-bond market could be shattered by even one major default. Says Preston Martin, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board: "The market has not been tested by some significant negative surprises, which inevitably will come at some point." A default would probably cause no substantial damage to pension funds and other large, sophisticated investors, which generally keep only a small part of their portfolio in such certificates. But federal regulators are concerned about the increasing amount of junk-bond investing by banks and by savings and loans. Says Norman Raiden, chief...