Description: Banking on Fraud investigates the fraud-facilitated leveraged buyouts engineered by Michael Milken and the firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert, and suggests how such buyouts have multiple and extensive consequences for the organization of business and the economy. The book answers several important questions. How was the fraud organized and executed? How did Milken gain control of the High-Yield Bond Department? How did internal structural contradictions at Drexel lead to a loss of control of that department and facilitate fraud? How did the High-Yield Bond Department dominate bond issuers and buyers and gain control of the economic, political, and legal environments in which the bond transactions took place? In addressing these questions, Zey demonstrates how the ordinary networks developed through the buying and selling of bonds were linked to the extraordinary networks of the Boesky Organizations and Employee Private Partnerships to defraud bond issuers and buyers. Her analysis not only defines the networks as the avenues of power, but also traces the direction of the power relationships between corporations and investment bankers and between investment bankers and the congressmen relevant to banking interests. The book provides evidence that debunks the myth of rational economic organization in the 19805 and establishes broad implications for theories of organizational deviance.

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