Word: junking
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Silverado's amazing expansion and rapid demise illustrates the broader evils behind the S&L disaster. It is a tale of interlocking relationships and sweet deals among S&Ls and their biggest customers, the possible impact of political contributions in delaying crackdowns by regulators, even the deceptive lure of junk bonds and their king, Michael Milken. It is not a case history of nice guys being caught innocently in an oil bust, as the defunct thrift's managers often claim. It is a study in greed, deceit and profiteering...
Government investigators are now probing a complex network of companies and S&Ls that invested deeply in junk bonds, mostly handled by Drexel Burnham Lambert, and carried out elaborate deals to swap the bonds and other assets. Some of the bonds were used to artificially shore up ailing thrifts or were sold in multimillion-dollar lots to cooperating S&Ls. Federal investigators are giving particular scrutiny to Silverado, Charles Keating's Lincoln S&L in California, CenTrust Bank in Miami, and San Jacinto Savings in Texas. Each had extensive business dealings with Drexel and with one another...
Milken had profitably discovered that S&Ls could use junk bonds in two ways: to borrow money for expansion and to invest money for a high rate of return. M.D.C.'s Mizel, hard pressed by the economic downturn in Denver and kept afloat by insider swaps with Silverado, met the junk-bond king in Manhattan and became Milken's enthusiastic client. So too did the influential Norman Brownstein, an M.D.C. board member and Mizel's attorney, who lobbied in Washington in favor of the use of junk bonds...
Other critics said they had suffered in the collapse of the junk-bond market or had taken pay cuts in the aftermath of corporate buyouts. Claude Daughtry, a real estate agent in Berkeley, complained that he had lost money in the junk-bond debacle and called Milken's fine a travesty. Ronald Cornwall, a Pennsauken, N.J., grocery clerk, said his salary plunged from $33,000 to $24,700 when his employer, Pathmark, was acquired...
Direct-mail advertisers are worried about the sudden desire among consumers to cut down on junk mail. More than 1 million people, an elevenfold increase over last summer, have signed up for the post office's preference service, which eliminates many third-class and sales mailings. The Direct Marketing Association blames the backlash on the 1989 book 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth. The best seller's No. 1 recommendation: get rid of unnecessary mail. "If only 100,000 people stopped their junk mail," the book claims, "we could save about 150,000 trees every year...