[byset]

SEC pursued junk bond pioneer Michael Milken in the 1980s, Ivan Boesky before that… unsure of specifics of SEC personnel getting to “high office” because of that but seems obvious that high profile successful prosecutions would be career-making

(Granted those examples are from the 80s but i would think there are more recent examples…)

Milken was prosecuted by Rudy Giuliani which didn’t hurt Giuliani’s career, but Rudy was a US district attorney or something, not SEC

Agree with your sentiment generally though, seems like a boatload of people could have been put away after the financial crisis but they instead profited from bailouts

[version_five]

Milken's prosecution didnt really hurt his career much either. Hes still a billionaire (and if I remember right, his brother did very well too).

PS - read Den of Thieves again - there is an imo strong parallel between what was going on with junk bonds in the 80s and what is happening now with VC money. When Milken was indicted, he couldn't keep all the balls in the air anymore and the whole thing fell apart. I'm very interested to see what parallel will play out this time and when.

[byset]

Didn’t hurt his career much? He was barred from the securities industry forever. Sure he had a lot of money left, but how can you know where his career would go if he weren’t prosecuted? That’s like saying that if Bill Gates were forced to cash out of Microsoft in the 80s it wouldn’t have affected his career much because, after all, he would still be a billionaire