Everywhere we turn now, the similarities between today’s events and The Great Depression are springing up as fast as the daises.
And like ghosts, a few forgotten figures have suddenly sprung from the pages of the past, reminding us that there really is nothing new under the sun.
One of them is Marriner S. Eccles, whose description of what caused the Great Depression has an eerie an ring to it
Another is someone else you’ve probably never heard of before. His name is Ferdinand Pecora.
In 1932, Pecora led a Congressional commission charged with investigating the market crash of 1929.
What he found was nothing short of scandalous.
For instance, in a near mirror image to today, the Pecora commission revealed that National City Bank sold bad loans off to Latin American countries by packing them into securities and pawning them off on unsuspecting investors.
Moreover, the hearings also unearthed evidence that the Wall Street game was largely rigged, benefiting the rich at the expense of ordinary investors.
Sound familiar?
In the aftermath, Ferdinand Pecora published a memoir that recounted details of the investigations entitled: Wall Street Under Oath.
In it Pecora wrote:
“Bitterly hostile was Wall Street to the enactment of the regulatory legislation. Had there been full disclosure of what was being done in furtherance of these schemes, they could not long have survived the fierce light of publicity and criticism. Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker’s stoutest allies.” (emphasis mine).
Eighty years later, those are words that easily could have been written yesterday.
So here is the latest on the move to shine some light into that very darkness.
In short, the ghost of Ferdinand Pecora lives….
For more on that story, here’s the Goldman Sachs take down by Dylan Ratigan last week.
It was devastating…..
Great stuff Dylan.
Related Articles:
Epic Fail: Brooksley Born Demolishes Alan Greenspan
Jim Rogers on the Goldman Sachs Bombshell
Gerald Celente: The 2010 Crash
Matt Taibbi: Goldman is “Re-creating the conditions for another crash”
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