Wall Street Under Oath: The Story of Our Modern Money Changers

xi, 311, [3] pp. An investigate report explaining the market pressures that led to the United States Banking Act of 1933, more commonly known as the Glass - Steagall Act. This act's repeal has, in some critics' opinions, led to increased corruption and illegal manipulation in the stock market. "What happened to that common stock for which you paid $236 in 1929 and that was selling at 40c a share when last heard from' How did those foreign bonds that yielded 9% on your investment come to be worth nothing at all' Surely all that money must have gone somewhere. The answer is that it did and this book tells you where it went. Wall Street has put many an innocent victim through the wringer in its time, but it took Ferdinand Pecora to reverse the process. As Counsel for the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency he subpoenaed some of the richest men in America and asked them, under oath, how they made their fortunes. For seventeen months, starting in January, 1933, the 'Pecora Investigation,' as it came to be called, filled the newspapers. Yet it led one journalist to file a strange complaint. He begged Mr. Pecora not to break so many front-page stories daily because it was physically impossible to cover them all. Wall Street Under Oath does what the newspapers of the period could not do. It brings together some of the most important disclosures of the Senate Committee. It tells the inside story of American high finance in its most frenzied period. It contains the judgments, the personal impressions, and the conclusions of the man whose personality dominated all the proceedings. The past five years have vindicated Ferdinand Pecora's seventeen months of work. Four of the New Deal's major reforms came as a direct consequence of the Wall Street Investigation - the Banking Act of 1933, the 'Truth in Securities' Bill, the Securities and Exchange Commission Act, and the Public Utility Holding Company Act. Ferdinand Pecora writes about the investigation in the same straightforward way he conducted it. He starts right in with the testimony of J.P. Morgan and follows through with Charles E. Mitchell, Albert H. Wiggin, Winthrop W. Aldrich, Otto H. Kahn and Harry F. Sinclair. After describing how some of our richest men amassed fortunes during the golden 1920s, Ferdinand Pecora takes up some typical case histories - the rise and fall of Samuel Insull, Albert H. Wiggin's family corporate empire, and the Detroit bank crisis, which led to the national banking holiday in March, 1933. Wall Street Under Oath adds a new chapter to American history. It is a book of enduring importance."