Criminals pardoning criminals. That’s harsh indictment to be sure, but other words fail when trying to describe a wrongly pardoned president who last month wiped clean the records of a Whitman’s Sampler of former white collar federal convicts – some unjustly victimized in one or another era of over-sentencing; but the rest cold stone guilty of white collar defrauding and coverups of varying sorts.
Make no mistake, credit is due whichever White House evil genius put this pardons/commutations scheme in play. Interspersed with the seven male former offenders are four women, three of whom were convicted on nonviolent drug charges – crimes inflicting damage on others, but far less than that at the hands of a then New York City police commissioner (Bernie Kerik), former governor of Illinois (Rod Blagojevich) or junk bond artist (Michael Milken).
Blagojevich was still doing time in a federal prison in Colorado at the time of his clemency. That factor, combined with the crudely fashioned, public denials that he tried to sell Barak Obama’s vacant seat to the highest bidder, has him soaking up most of the early media.
But smarmy though “Blago” proved to be, the case could be made Milken wreaked the greater impact in the long run. Considered the persona of 1980s Wall Street insider trading, he leveraged information gained from connections in various firms, at one point elevating him to status as the top earner in Wall Street history.
Yet it’s not Milken’s onetime billions that should worry us, but the skill with which he was able to beat federal policing significantly more robust than that in the era of a hands-off Trump. Describing Wall Street as victimized by federal constraints, he and his supply side advisors continue to push for targeted deregulation, upping the odds for end runs similar to Milken’s use of junk (high risk) bonds. (Not that Trump is uniformly admired by those who work the markets. His (for now) trade treaties with China notwithstanding, Trump’s ongoing cavalier threats to impose more tariffs make for unnecessary fluctuation in the bull market he inherited.)
The true and ongoing threat posed by Milken’s tack is not just that it survives as a partial template for today’s unsultry insiders; but as then dean of Northwestern University, Donald Jacobs noted upon Milken’s conviction in 1990, “The legacy that he’s going to leave us is a lot of companies that are heavily in debt. Some will survive, but many won’t.”
Jacobs proved prophetic about the fallout, not only for the businesses, but inevitably the markets themselves. It’s a cautionary tale about oversight that should not be forgotten.
Milken has since shown himself a generous philanthropist and able economist, having started a nonpartisan economic think tank with a solid reputation. People learn and change. Life goes on.
Yet a dubious pardon should not obscure the impact of Milken’s earlier actions, for they affected not just companies and investors, but everyone from the legitimate traders to the support staff to the nightly office cleaners.
At some level it doesn’t matter if Milken was pardoned, or just continued redeeming his past without Trumpian fanfare. What matters is our present and future under a Chief Enabler whose love of a wide-open marketplace far exceeds his will to protect it from another Mike Milken.
Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2020
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us