After The 1929 Crash, We Had In 1933, Ferdinand Pecora... Now, We Have Eric Holder...

[WillyT]

Just what are you doing these days, Eric?



<snip>

Ferdinand Pecora (January 6, 1882 – December 7, 1971) was an American lawyer and judge who became famous in the 1930s as Chief Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency during its investigation of Wall Street banking and stock brokerage practices.

...

n 1922, Pecora was named chief assistant district attorney, the number-two man in the office under the newly elected Joab H. Banton. In 1929, Banton chose Pecora as his heir apparent, but Tammany Hall refused to nominate him, fearing that the honest Pecora might bring prosecutions against its members. Pecora left the district attorney's office for private practice, where he remained until 1933.

...

The Senate committee hearings that Pecora led probed the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that launched a major reform of the American financial system. Pecora, aided by John T. Flynn, a journalist, and Max Lowenthal, a lawyer, personally undertook many of the interrogations during the hearings, including such Wall Street personalities as Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange, George Whitney (a partner in J.P. Morgan & Co.) and investment bankers Thomas W. Lamont, Otto H. Kahn, Albert H. Wiggin of Chase National Bank, and Charles E. Mitchell of National City Bank (now Citibank). Because of Pecora's work, the hearings soon acquired the popular name the Pecora Commission, and Time magazine featured Pecora on the cover of its June 12, 1933 issue.<1><2>

Pecora's investigation unearthed evidence of irregular practices in the financial markets that benefited the rich at the expense of ordinary investors, including exposure of Morgan’s “preferred list” by which the bank’s influential friends (including Calvin Coolidge, the former president, and Owen J. Roberts, a justice of Supreme Court of the United States) participated in stock offerings at steeply discounted rates. He also revealed that National City sold off bad loans to Latin American countries by packing them into securities and selling them to unsuspecting investors, that Wiggin had shorted Chase shares during the crash, profiting from falling prices, and that Mitchell and top officers at National City had received $2.4 million in interest-free loans from the bank’s coffers.

Spurred by these revelations, the United States Congress enacted the Glass–Steagall Act, the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. With the United States in the grips of the Great Depression, Pecora's investigations highlighted the contrast between the lives of millions of Americans in abject poverty and the lives of such financiers as J.P. Morgan, Jr.; under Pecora's questioning, Morgan and many of his partners admitted that they had paid no income tax in 1931 and 1932; they explained their failure to pay taxes by reference to their losses in the stock market's decline.

<snip>

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Pecora

For even more, here's a book on him: http://www.amazon.com/Hellhound-Wall-Street-Ferdinand-Investigation/dp/product-description/1594202729



We sorely need a guy like that again.

:shrug:

[gkhouston]

1. We need a guy willing to appoint a guy like that.

I'm not holding my breath.

[WillyT]

3. Yep... Wouldn't Be Prudent... Wouldn't Be Bi-Partisan...

:banghead:

:beer:

:hi:

[Kaleko]

15. Wouldn't be allowed by the Bilderberg cabal

or whatever name you want to give our multinational, mostly unelected puppet masters who own everyone with any real influence on the proceedings on the world stage.

Now a series of uprisings becomes inevitable.

[Angry Dragon]

2. K&R

[kwassa]

4. My ex's great aunt was his secretary.

A woman I knew well, to a ripe old age. Her very first job out of secretarial school was working for him, and she went home accompanied with bodyguards every night.

[WillyT]

5. Wow... Way Cool !!!

Not the bodyguard part, but... wow.

She must have had some stories to tell.

:hi:

[virgogal]

10. Neat !

[panader0]

6. Thanks for the history lesson.

[amborin]

7. K&R Elliot Spitzer was heading in this great direction, alas

[On the Road]

12. Twenty Years Ago,

so was Rudy Giuliani. For whatever that's worth.

[villager]

8. Of course, we had two distinct parties in Washington in those days, too

n/t

[Wilms]

9. Brilliant post! Here's to 250 recommends! n/t

:toast:

:patriot:

[Gidney N Cloyd]

11. K&R

[Mnemosyne]

13. K&R for truth and visibility. n/t

[WillyT]

14. G'Night Kick !!!

:boring:

:hi:

:kick:

[StarburstClock]

16. We're supposed to put torture, criminal banks and 1000s of other crimes behind us...

As soon as they happen it's time to move on and do nothing about systemic corruption ruining the country.

[WillyT]

17. Kick !!!

:kick:

[slipslidingaway]

18. knr - someone in congress mentioned Pecora in the past couple of years ...

did not get much attention.

Top Senate Democrat: bankers "own" the U.S. Congress
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/04/30/ownership/index.html


"Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place." The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis "own" the U.S. Congress -- according to one of that institution's most powerful members -- demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is.

The ownership of the federal government by banks and other large corporations is effectuated in literally countless ways, none more effective than the endless and increasingly sleazy overlap between government and corporate officials. Here is just one random item this week announcing a couple of standard personnel moves:


Former Barney Frank staffer now top Goldman Sachs lobbyist

Goldman Sachs' new top lobbyist was recently the top staffer to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., on the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Frank. Michael Paese, a registered lobbyist for the Securities Industries and Financial Markets Association since he left Frank's committee in September, will join Goldman as director of government affairs, a role held last year by former Tom Daschle intimate, Mark Patterson, now the chief of staff at the Treasury Department. This is not Paese's first swing through the Wall Street-Congress revolving door: he previously worked at JP Morgan and Mercantile Bankshares, and in between served as senior minority counsel at the Financial Services Committee.


So: Paese went from Chairman Frank's office to be the top lobbyist at Goldman, and shortly before that, Goldman dispatched Paese's predecessor, close Tom Daschle associate Mark Patterson, to be Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, himself a protege of former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin and a virtually wholly owned subsidiary of the banking industry. That's all part of what Desmond Lachman -- American Enterprise Institute fellow, former chief emerging market strategist at Salomon Smith Barney and top IMF official (no socialist he) -- recently described as "Goldman Sachs's seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs."

[WillyT]

19. Kick !!!

:kick:

:shrug: