Michael Lewis
Step onto the ruthless 1980s trading floor of Salomon Brothers, where gluttonous bond salesmen played million-dollar bluffing games and birthed the modern, chaotic mortgage bond market using other people's money.
The Federal Reserve's 1979 decision to let interest rates float transformed bonds from conservative investments into volatile, highly speculative instruments that generated unprecedented trading profits.
Salomon Brothers revolutionized finance by pooling mundane home mortgages into tradable, government-backed securities, inadvertently setting the stage for future financial crises.
Michael Milken redefined corporate finance by realizing that high-yield junk bonds could fund hostile takeovers and highly leveraged buyouts of massive corporations.