American Notes NEW YORK

David Stockman has never been much of a team player. As director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in 1981, he was taken "to the woodshed" by the President for publicly criticizing Reaganomics. Stockman admitted that he cooked the figures in the budgets he sent to Congress; his skill with numbers landed him a six-figure job as a managing director at Salomon Brothers, a Wall Street investment house.

Last week Stockman, 41, joined the mass defection from Salomon since October's crash by jumping to merchant bankers the Blackstone Group. He will also start his own affiliated firm, Stockman & Co., thus becoming his own boss at last.