He was once talking to an ambitions entrepreneur about funding a buyout with junk, and the entrepreneur asked, "This is a lot of money. How do you know I'll replay it?"
Milkin says he replied, "Because if you miss even a single payment, I'll call your debt and take not just the company, but every single asset you own."
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* That would be presidentially pardoned convicted felon Michael Milkin. The rules for "righting injustice through pardons" are very different for the rich than the comfortably well off, much less those living paycheque to paycheque.
Why should it stop? Do you not believe in redemption? Milken has done (and continues to do) a lot of great charity work with his fortune.
Besides, if you look at what Milken was actually convicted of, it's pretty tame, especially by today's standards. And he spent two years in prison for it. What more do you want?
So if we are saying, "Everyone convicted of a felony who serves their time and who then rehabilitates themselves should be pardoned," I'm all for it. And in my jurisdiction (Canada), people can apply for Federal pardons, and many receive them. There is a standard way to do it, a standard procedure to follow, and in theory, everyone is treated equally by the system.
The injustice comes in if there is a special fast-track for a pardon one gets by hob-nobbing with your fellow wealthy oligarchs, one of whom is elected President and gives you a personal pardon. That's a bad look that suggests that all felons are equal, but some felons are more equal than others.
Likewise, I am extremely leery of talking about "doing great charity work." Reputation laundering is my preferred term, and again this is not something available to all citizens. Nobody gives a crap if some felon donates $1,000 to a soup kitchen, but donate $1,000,000 and you get called a "philanthropist."
I'm all for charity and doing good works, but I'm not for giving philanthropists anything special in terms of justice that people who can't afford to be philanthropists get.
IMO, the answer is not to burn Milken's pardon, it's to pardon more convicted felons who do their time and then turn their backs on whatever criminal acts they used to commit.
People are afraid to expose themselves to liability for hiring a felon, even if said felony is ages ago, because if something goes wrong everyone will say "well you shouldn't have hired a felon."
I do not believe in random justice where connected people can be pardoned even if they deserve so when there are literally millions in jail who could be as deserving.
Sadly important today, pardons can be corrupt. Trump several times promised pardons for people willing to go to jail for him. And he delivered on those pardons.
So yes I believe in redemption, but not by executive decree. That belongs in a time when we had kings with real power.
Finally, the prison time is often from a plea bargain (I do not like those either but different story). So the time sentenced to does not always have a meaning.
By that logic though -- if you're a billionaire, could you try to buy every profitable company on borrowed money?
Eventually you'd make the money back and since you don't have to pay anything out of pocket, you effectively have $INFINITY dollars to bargain with.
He has no "infinity" of anything. It's called leverage and it probably maxes out around 60-70% of everything he owns.
Musk has 100 billion of TSLA say.
He mortgages it to buy TWTR. Now he has 100 billion of TSLA, -40 billion loan against it, and 40 billion of TWTR. He could mortgage TWTR and buy something else, but it would have to be smaller, because the banks won't loan 100% of the value of the thing.
Or he'd have to make another $40 billion and pay off the first loan to mortgage it again.
Think of it as trying to use mortgage properties in monopoly to continue buying other properties.
Unless you're on robinhood: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/robinhood-traders-discover-glitc...
Maybe we'll see a wallstreetbets post "Musk couldn't take TWTR private but I did via robin hood bug"
I'm taking a broad definition of "trust" that includes "we can sue you and recover the money."