The Pecora Commission Investigated Wall Street Crash of 1929. Read This & Demand A 2009 Committee

We should not allow what Wall Street has done to remain in the dark.

Let's learn about the Pecora Commission and demand a one NOW in 2009. It's been done before. By REPUBLICANS. It needs to be done again.


Rep. Marcy Kaptur - March 24, 2009

"....And, finally, we ought to investigate, investigate, investigate. In an article last week titled, ``Then It's Securities Fraud,'' journalist Froma Harrop wrote that law professor William Black of the University of Missouri Kansas City, who is also renowned for his work in ethics, has mounted a campaign for a new Pecora-type investigation here in the Congress. That was a series of hearings held by the Senate Banking Committee into financial wrongdoing at the end of the Great Depression.

Harrop writes, ``As the bottom was falling out of derivatives trading, AIG was reporting healthy profits. That's not allowed under the law. Meanwhile, the company created a short-term bonus system for its top executives.''

Professor Black's call for a Pecora Commission should not go unheeded by this Congress. The issue of securities fraud is not a small matter.

The first order of business is to get the financial system righted so the ship doesn't sink. We owe that to the American people who are trying to hold on to their own dreams.

Then the Congress must launch an investigation like no other into the causes of this crisis. And frankly, it is a conundrum to this Member why that set of investigations has not already begun. We need to learn every detail about what happened and why and bring the wrongdoers to justice so that this never, ever happens again..."

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Pecora Commission
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pecora Commission is the name commonly used to describe the commission established on March 4, 1932, by the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to investigate the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The name refers to the fourth and final Chief Counsel to the committee, Ferdinand Pecora.

Created by a majority-Republican Senate, its first Chairman was Republican Senator Peter Norbeck. Hearings began on April 11, 1932, but were criticized by Democratic Party members and their supporters as being little more than an attempt by the Republicans to appease the growing demands of an angry American public suffering through the Great Depression. ..... According to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the Commission's first two counsels were fired and a third resigned after the committee refused to give him broad subpoena powers. Ferdinand Pecora, an assistant district attorney for New York County, discovered, upon taking the committee counsel position, that the investigation was incomplete.

Following the Wall Street Crash, the U.S. economy had gone into a depression, and a large number of banks failed. The Pecora Commission initiated major reform of the American financial system. As Chief Counsel, Ferdinand Pecora personally examined many high-profile witnesses that included some of the nation's most influential bankers and stockbrokers. ........ Given wide media coverage, the testimony of the powerful banker J.P. Morgan, Jr. caused a public outcry after he admitted under examination that he and many of his partners had not paid any income taxes in 1931 and 1932.

As reiterated by SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt during his 1995 testimony before the United States House of Representatives, the Pecora Commission uncovered a wide range of abusive practices on the part of banks and bank affiliates. These included a variety of conflicts of interest such as the underwriting of unsound securities in order to pay off bad bank loans as well as "pool operations" to support the price of bank stocks. The hearings galvanized broad public support for new securities laws. As a result of the Pecora Commission's findings, the United States Congress passed the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, instituting disclosure laws for corporations seeking public financing, and in 1935 formed the SEC as a means to enforce the new Acts.

In 1939 Ferdinand Pecora published his memoirs that recounted details of the investigations. Titled "Wall Street Under Oath", Pecora wrote: "Bitterly hostile was Wall Street to the enactment of the regulatory legislation." As to disclosure rules, he stated that "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."

civil ceremony.

My MIL had been the official Soprano for the City of New York...singing at all these functions. He INSISTED upon marrying them, even though they had had a Jewish religious ceremony just prior. Wouldn't take no for an answer.

On edit: Probably not the reply you wanted to hear...but trivia's my middle name...