One trader built the market for 'junk' bonds, then went to prison over how he sold them

At Drexel Burnham Lambert in the 1980s, Michael Milken pioneered the large-scale use of high-yield 'junk' bonds to finance corporate takeovers, arguing that data showed their higher interest more than compensated for the extra default risk. He earned hundreds of millions of dollars a year doing it, then pleaded guilty in 1990 to securities violations and served nearly two years in prison.

— Connie Bruck, The Predators' Ball — Penguin, 1988
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