By Aly El Shalakany

When we think of revolutions, we think of protests and a common calling by the masses to radically change things or to replace the political regime altogether. But revolutions can happen in the business world as well and the roaring 1980s saw extreme turbulence on Main Street and Wall Street that had a profound impact on the way we do things that have lasted until this very day.

On Wall Street, banking was transformed from a boring, low-risk, steady as you go type of business into an innovative, ultra-aggressive, winner takes all culture that could make you a multi-millionaire or out of a job before you turned 30. In this new age, nobody was safe, and the decade quickly witnessed its first high profile victim in Salomon Brothers, a top investment bank and cornerstone of Wall Street since 1910, as a result of aggressive risk taking that is best captured by Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker. But nothing quite symbolized this new world order like the “Highly Confident” letter issued by the Junk Bond King himself, Michael Milken.

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