In a Man in Full in the scene where the bankers are grilling the guy who owes them money, they are worried because he owes them so much they have a problem - of course they do their best not to let on that such is the case and he evidently doesn't pick up on it either. I'm not sure the amount he owed in the book, published in 1998, but I believe it was 600 million dollars.
evidently a user named wasteduniverse is shadow-banned or something, I saw his question but it was marked dead and I couldn't reply. Looking at his comments page all his other comments were also grayed out and dead.
I don't know what he did but since his question seems unproblematic enough I'll answer here - I didn't finish all the book, my Tom Wolfe phase was done, it seemed ok but not as cool as I thought Bonfire of the Vanities was, I remember some snide reviews of it at the time all about how Wolfe was still trying to be his idea of a great writer which was hopelessly out of date (opinion of reviewers).
My understanding it the Netflix adaptation has gotten a lot of complaints.
