JADED FEDS MEET CORRUPT WALL STREET

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 23, 1992                   TAG: 9202230295
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: D-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by LARRY SHIELD
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
JADED FEDS MEET CORRUPT WALL STREET
EAGLE ON THE STREET. By David A. Vise and Steve Coll. Scribner's. $24.95.
The title of this book refers to the nickname given to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by the financial community it regulates.
The book focuses on the years between Ronald Reagan's first inauguration, 1981, and the sentencing of Michael Milken for securities fraud in 1990.
The frame of reference used is that of John Shad, chairman of the SEC during the tumultuous period when corporate takeovers were king, and junk bonds were the bullets fired by financial raiders looking for a quick score.
When Shad came to Washington from E.F. Hutton, he naively thought that Congress was really interested in protecting the public and that all investment bankers were honest. He met John Dingwell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who used his power to harass the SEC and its staffers for political purposes. He learned of Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and the brokerage firm of Drexel, Burnham, Lambert who collectively paid the government $1.35 billion in fines when the dust finally settled in 1990. Most of all, Shad learned that in Washington, as in the financial world, good men and honest men are few and far between.
The authors, both reporters for The Washington Post, earned a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the market scandals of the '80s. Using previously unpublished material, they have fleshed out their newspaper stories into this engrossing view of jaded Washington and corrupt Wall Street.

Larry Shield writes software.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB