Mike Milken ruined America.

The one-time “Junk Bond King” from Beverly Hills had his rap sheet whitewashed by President Donald Trump some 30-plus years after Milken’s financial hijinx sent him to jail and rearranged key slices of the nation’s economy.

His legal redemption got a litany of support from billionaires such as Angels owner Arte Moreno, Los Angeles real estate baron Tom Barrack and California supermarket dealmaker Ron Burkle.

Look, we know “justice” can be bought. That’s not news.

The currency of Milken’s legacy is that three decades after his debt-selling business empire collapsed, Corporate America’s love affair with debt has put financial engineering above that of new products or employees.

Like many cons, Milken offered some truth to what he was overselling. Junk bonds, his secret sauce, were indeed a game-changer. As the White House stated in announcing his pardon, “his innovative work greatly expanded access to capital for emerging companies.”

You see, America’s corporate financial system before Milken popularized junk bonds was a club with limited membership. Only the best-known, well-connected and financially strongest companies could easily borrow.

Milken saw what was a legitimate opportunity in unconventional corporate lending: selling risky bonds with repayment backed by companies with less-than-stellar finances. It’s much like “sub-prime” mortgages or car loans for folks with bad credit scores.

The initial reward for the junk bond business came from the huge fees collected for brokering such dicey deals. Investors liked collecting sky-high interest rates charged to “junk” companies. How the business was grown became the problem.

This unorthodox financing was offered up to corporate raiders who used the fresh source of cash to attack, acquire (and then often dismember) ailing or undervalued companies. Information about those takeover bids was improperly shared, creating criminal, insider-trading opportunities.

Companies borrowing through the junk-bond machine – especially numerous ailing savings and loans — were known to buy each other’s junk bonds. That was another shady way to inflate demand for these securities.

Milken and his pals left extreme corporate damage in their collective wakes. Junk-bond-funded corporate raids zapped jobs in targeted companies that were “right-sized” or dismantled. Other businesses succumbed under the weight of junk-bond debt loads. Investors lost huge sums in various junk-bond investments that went sour.

A lengthy hangover had to be endured from the bust of the debt-fueled 1980s. Economic malaise lingered for almost half of the next decade, throttling business growth in many parts of the nation – especially in California.

Three decades later, the troubling legacy isn’t these dubious deals — whether actual frauds or mere technical regulatory violations (as Milken’s fans would argue). The enduring agony is far too many executive suites seemingly focused inward — directly at the balance sheet: What pennies can be pinched and how can those savings can be levered?

Change is never pretty but “modern” finance hasn’t always served the greater good. Note that the corporate slice of the U.S. bond market has grown more than seven-fold in the last three decades. Consumer debt, as a comparison, got 4.5 times bigger.

So don’t just blame outdated thinking, over-regulation or foreign competition for shuttered factories, vacant malls or shrinking middle-class job opportunities. Look inside those sad stories and you’ll often find a debt-heavy financing chapter or two. Or think of all those creatively financed corporate mergers that create “synergies” — polite talk for staff reductions.

Or look at homebuilding, an industry the White House claimed was “transformed” by Milken innovation.

Housing construction before the 1990s was a decidedly regionally funded industry (that’s what savings and loans did) with building done by a robust number of regional developers. Today, it’s a craft dominated by huge national builders using globally sourced financing.

The result? Stagnant construction and pricier homes built.

It’s one example of how this new-age financial engineering provided fabulous stock market returns over three decades.

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Milken’s junk-bond exploits created enough personal wealth so that he could write several nine-figure checks to settle his myriad of legal issues with the government and still remain one of the nation’s wealthiest people. And he served 22 months of prison time, too.

I’m not against second chances. I’m not against rehabilitation. His philanthropy is commendable.

But Milken, pardoned or not, still symbolizes, to me, among the worst of corporate excess. His financial “innovation” amplified by others over the past quarter-century-plus is yet another reason why the economic pendulum swings farther in favor of the business owner.

And like it or not, that’s why a seemingly foreign concept like “socialism” is gaining American popularity.