[QUOTE=fatboy]Not surprisingly, Mother Teresa gets the votes. After all, she spent her life helping the poor. Her good deeds live on even after her death: several thousand sisters now continue the charities she began. She's up for Saint hood. In her life, it's not unrealistic to estimate that she helped hundreds of thousands of people.

But those who argue that the nun gets the nod by a wide margin aren't considering all of the facts. They pick right up on the fact that Milken was a greedy financier who made whack sums of money and eventually spent 2 years in federal prison for securities fraud. But they neglect to understand that Michael Milken, by pioneering a new way for companies to raise money, created MILLIONS of jobs.

Milken financed McCaw Cellular - which we now use their cellular network to make calls. And our calls are cheeper because Milken's junk bonds financed MCI. Without Milken, MCI wouldn't have grown from 11 to 50,000 employees. CNN's 24-hour news and Ted Turner's other ventures were made possible by Milken's "junk."

The world's biggest toy company, Mattel, the cosmetics company Revlon, and the supermarket giant Safeway were among many rescued from bankruptcy by Milken's junk bonds. He finance more than 3,000 companies, including what are now Barnes & Noble, AOL Time Warner, Comcast, Mellon Bank, Occidental Petroleum, Jeep Eagle, Calvin Klein, Hasbro, Days Inn, 7-Eleven, and Computer Associates.

"Well, that's not necessarily poor people," you say. And I would have to kind of agree. But, by providing the financing for the companies that created these jobs, Milken helped millions avoid being poor either from the loss of their jobs due to company insolvency (which many of these companies were in) or by ensuring that these new ideas had the food they needed to grow into powerhouses they are now.

Aside from all of that, Milken donated HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars to education and medical research.

It really boils down to what we value in this world and what we consider commendable. The selfish pursuit of our goals and dreams in the face of so much worldwide strife is not commendable. Despite the fact that the selfish pursuit of goals and dreams has done more to lift the world out of poverty than any saint ever has or could.

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup