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President Trump has taken some criticisms for the pardons he recently issued, so let’s take a look at one of them: Michael Milken. In 1990, Milken pleaded guilty to a technical securities offense, for which he was pardoned on Tuesday. Milken was an outsider who took on a cozy establishment, beat them at their own game, and then was chewed up and spit out by a shameful criminal law system. His pardon was well-deserved. Milken came from a humble background. As a nerdy Jewish teenager, he attended a public high school in Encino, California, and his rise was a great...

WASHINGTON -- New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani urged President Clinton Tuesday to free convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, a move that could boost Jewish support for the Republican's prospective Senate campaign -- and complicate a possible run in 2000 by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. ... Regarding Pollard, Giuliani said the Israeli deserves presidential clemency because the life sentence for espionage given him in 1987 goes "way beyond" sentences given in the past to American citizens convicted of spying for a U.S. ally. Pollard, a former civilian U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, has already served a longer prison term than enemy...

California Unemployment Report Fosters Doubts On Recovery The addition of 28,300 jobs in May mostly represents temporary census positions, adding to fears that the state's climb out of the recession will take longer than expected. Alana Semuels June 18, 2010 California added 28,300 jobs to its payrolls in May, but many were temporary government jobs, adding to fears that the economic recovery will be even more sluggish than originally anticipated. The state added 30,000 federal government jobs in the month, according to the Employment Development Department. Many of them were census jobs. The manufacturing, information and professional and business services...

Ross DeVol of the Milken Institute on the best ways to create long-term job growth.

The Milken Institute is based in Southern California, but its annual survey of business conditions in the nation's cities has almost nothing good to say about California. It heaps praise on Texas - the Austin area was ranked No. 1 on Milken's list of "best-performing cities," released today, while three other Texas cities were listed in the top five, with only No. 3 Salt Lake City cracking that elite list. Cities in recession-wracked California, meanwhile, saw their rankings decline - especially those hit hard by the collapse of the housing market. "Metropolitan areas with a high exposure to durable manufacturing...

In the 1980s Michael Milken made a vast fortune and name for himself issuing and trading high yield corporate debt securities popularly known as junk bonds at Drexel Burnham Lambert. By the time BHO through is mismanaging the federal budget, U.S. government debt securities including T-bills, T-notes, and T-bonds are going to have the same level of safety and security as junk bonds, perhaps even worse. In the investment world, U.S. government bonds have traditionally been considered the safest of all investments. Safer than stocks, mutual funds, high grade corporate and muncipal bonds. The problem is the first thing we...

This is quite long and includes video/audio at the source. Last night I was in Los Angeles, flew out there right after the program yesterday -- actually, Beverly Hills. Michael Milken, who is a friend of mine... runs the Prostate Cancer Foundation... Milken has this thing every year called the Milken Institute Global Forum, and he brings in people from all over the world, some of the wealthiest tycoons in the world, and it's a three-day seminar, and there are programs, speakers, panel discussions all day long. Last night was a debate, and the participants in the debate were Harold...

The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution

Bernard Madoff, the Mafia, and the Friends of Michael Milken February 3rd, 2009 by Mark Mitchell In 2005, Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com and future Deep Capture investigative reporter, began a public crusade against illegal naked short selling (hedge funds and brokers creating phantom stock to manipulate stock prices down). He said, over and over, that the crime was destroying public companies and had the potential to trigger a systemic meltdown of our financial markets. Soon after, I began to investigate a network of short sellers, journalists, and miscreants. I concluded that many of the people in this network...

With a backlog of applications piled up at the Justice Department, high-profile criminals and their well-connected lawyers increasingly are appealing directly to President Bush for special consideration on pardons and clemency, according to people involved in the process. Among those seeking presidential action are former junk-bond salesman Michael Milken, who hired former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, one of the nation's most prominent GOP lawyers, to plead his case for a pardon on 1980s-era securities fraud charges. Two politicians convicted of public corruption, former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) and four-term Louisiana governor Edwin W. Edwards (D), are asking Bush...

Governors' Global Climate Summit Dear friend of the Institute: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has invited an influential group of national and world leaders to address climate change at a summit in Beverly Hills. The Governors’ Global Climate Summit will take place on November 18 and 19 at The Beverly Hilton. Governors from across the nation will join Schwarzenegger and international officials to discuss a blueprint for a new global agreement on climate change solutions. The governor has asked us to forward this information to friends of the Institute, and we are happy to do so. You are invited to watch the...

Felons Seeking Bush Pardon Near a Record By CHARLIE SAVAGE WASHINGTON — Felons are asking President Bush for pardons and commutations at historic levels as he nears his final months in office, a time when many other presidents have granted a flurry of clemency requests. Among the petitioners is Michael Milken, the billionaire former junk bond king turned philanthropist, who is seeking a pardon for his 1990 conviction for securities fraud, the Justice Department said. Mr. Milken sought a pardon eight years ago from President Bill Clinton, and submitted a new petition in June. In addition, prominent federal inmates are...

U.S. FINANCIAL CRISIS HAS GIVEN CAPITALISM BLACK EYE Every year the Milken Global Conference hosts a roundtable of Nobel laureates in economics, chaired by the financier Michael Milken. This year's discussion, held in Los Angeles April 29, includes Gary Becker (1992), Myron Scholes (1997), Michael Spence (2001) and Ed Phelps (2006). In this excerpt, the Nobel laureates discuss the depth of the U.S. financial crisis, its effect on the rest of the world and the commodity price rises for oil and food. By Gary Becker, Myron Scholes, Michael Spence and Ed Phelps Michael Milken: Almost 50 percent of the world's...

Don't blame small-town legislators for taking junkets. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday it's good for lawmakers "from those little towns" to go out in the world and see worldly things like "an airport," "a highway that maybe has 10 lanes" or even "a highway on top of a highway." The Republican governor, speaking at a conference with billionaire Michael Milken on infrastructure, said he has benefited by riding high-speed trains in France and China, which gave him more inspiration to support such projects in California. His comments on small-town legislators drew laughs and applause from the big-city audience at the...

The old admonition, "When something seems too good to be true, it probably is," virtually screams from accounts of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to "privatize" the California Lottery. Actually, to give credit where it's due, it's a Goldman Sachs/Lehman Brothers proposal; the governor is the pitch-man. The details are subject to negotiation, but the deal works something like this: The state turns over the California Lottery and monopoly control over lottery gambling in California to a private consortium (led by Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, could it be?) for the next 40 years. In exchange, the consortium pays the state...

Mendacious: Given to or marked by deliberate concealment or misrepresentation of the truth. John Garamendi is running for Lt. Governor and to supplement an apparent mendaciousness, he is praying for induced selective memory loss. Some fifteen years ago, as California insurance commissioner, Garamendi seized the assets of the Executive Life Insurance Company. In doing so, he allowed a questionable junk-bond player and a French government-owned bank to realize a humongous windfall despite a bunch of annuities and policyholders getting the short (and dirty) end of the stick. It is beyond troubling that the man who is ‘supposed’ to be the...

PACIFIC PALISADES - Wanting to see America beyond the beltway of power and politics in Washington, D.C., British Prime Minister Tony Blair began a two-day visit to Los Angeles on Monday - the first official trip to the Southland by a sitting British prime minister. Blair, who is here to discuss the environment, world politics and business, started with a meeting with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Port of Long Beach, where the two signed an agreement to tackle global warming. Later, Blair was the guest of honor at a reception hosted by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at the recently reopened...

Though more local school bonds are passing, voter support for these measures is in decline. This seeming contradiction can be understood by looking at the impact of Proposition 39 passed by voters in 2000. That year, a small group of multimillionaires and billionaires, most from the Silicon Valley, spent more than $60 million on a campaign to lower the vote threshold for the passage of local school bonds that only property owners are obligated to repay. The two-thirds vote for local bonds was established in the California Constitution of 1879 in recognition of the fact that not everyone who voted...

Executive Life Insurance policyholders have feuded with state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi over his 1991 seizure and resale of the company. They may find themselves in the same leaky boat, however, as the long-running financial, legal, diplomatic and political wrangle over billions of dollars in insurer assets nears a climax. Thousands of policyholders, many of them retirees and disabled who are dependent on income from annuities, are increasingly unlikely to receive a substantial recovery from the French businessmen who acquired Executive Life and its fat portfolio of junk bonds. And that means Garamendi is increasingly unlikely to get political relief...

When you're governor of California and need a boatload of cash in less than 80 days, you're going to be hanging out with some pretty wealthy people. Like Rick Cronk, who paid $1 million for Dreyer's Ice Cream in 1977 and merged it with Nestle three years ago in a deal reportedly worth $2.4 billion. He and his wife, Janet, are hosts for a fundraiser for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the East Bay on Sept. 28. Or Arte Moreno, owner of the Los Angeles Angels, who is throwing a Schwarzenegger fundraiser at the team's game in Anaheim on Tuesday night...