Sublime

24. At the height of Lorenzo’s borrowing, the cash that Lorenzo laid out in interest alone—more than $600 million a year—exceeded the annual sales for nearly 100 members of the Fortune 500. Alas for him, Lorenzo’s size also made him more visible, and more inviting, as a target.

FDR would be the firm’s front man on Wall Street, for which Black agreed to pay him $25,000 a year, five times his salary at the Navy Department. It was an arrangement from which both stood to profit. The hemorrhaging of Roosevelt’s finances would be stanched, and Black would benefit from Franklin’s name on the masthead.

But in 2005, U.S. banks and credit card companies lobbied successfully to tighten the terms of bankruptcy, increasing their claims on the future earnings of debtors. For workers and homeowners, bankruptcy leads to forfeiture of property to foreclosing banks or other creditors. Wage earners also lose when corporations use bankruptcy (or the threat o

bluff

Like Ickes, Wallace was a nominal Republican; also like Ickes, he was unknown to the president-elect before his appointment.

In part, because his success in public relations had been due primarily to his masterful utilization of a single public relations technique: identifying himself with a popular cause. This technique was especially advantageous to him because his philosophy—that accomplishment, Getting Things Done, is the only thing that matters, that the end justifi