Scott here with another episode of the History on Plug Podcast. When it comes to finance,

whether personal finance or corporate finance, we live in the world of Clarence Dylan. Dylan was

an investment banker who rose a prominence in the 1920s, and he pioneered leverage buyouts,

created modern bankruptcy law, invented junk bonds,

and engineered some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions ever. Before Dylan, if a company

experienced corporate failure, it was liquidated and sold for scraps and parts. After Dylan,

leverage buyouts became normal. A company with valuable assets could be repackaged and resold.

He did this with Goodyear tires. He engineered the buyout of

Dodge Motors in 1925 and sold it to Chrysler and created our modern system of creative

destruction in the American business world. Dylan also pioneered investment trust, which allowed

retail investors to pool money and access diversified portfolios of securities. This led to

modern mutual funds and index funds, which affects nearly every American

salaried worker because your retirement could now be in a 401k.

And even if you work on Main Street, you can invest in Wall Street, and you don't have to rely on getting family farmlands and inheritance or a company pension.

Today's guest is William Loomis, author of The Baron of Wall Street.

We look at Dylan

in his life, how he invented techniques during the roaring 20s that weren't really allowed after

the Great Depression when commercial and investment banking were separated, but then became in vogue

again in the 1980s, and Dylan was sort of a patron saint of Motorola, brick phone-era Wall Street,

and the good and the bad of the growing

codependency of Wall Street and political power in our own time.

Hope we enjoyed this discussion with William Loomis.

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