Per Niente Published and Edited by Joe Di leo l’estate duemilanove Volume V Issue III Email [email protected] Summer 2009

lar practices in the financial markets that benefited the Ferdinand J. rich at the expense of ordinary investors, including ex- Pecora was an posure of Morgan’s “preferred list” by which the bank’s American law- influential friends, including , the former yer and judge president, and Owen J. Roberts, a justice of Supreme who became Court of the , participated in stock offer- famous in the ings at steeply discounted rates. The riveting confronta- 1930s as Chief tion between Pecora and the grandees was Counsel to the so theatrically apt it might have been concocted by Hol- United States lywood. The combative Pecora was the perfect foil to Senate Com- the posh bankers who paraded before the microphones. mittee on Bank- Spurred by these revelations, the United States Con- ing and Cur- gress enacted the and the Securi- rency during its investigation of ties Exchange Act of 1934. Wall Street With the United States in the grips of the Great banking and Depression, Pecora's investigations highlighted the con- stock broker- trast between the lives of millions of Americans in abject age practices. poverty and the high-rolling lives of such financiers as J.P. Morgan, Jr.; under Pecora's insistent questioning, Ferdinand Pecora Ferdinand Pe- Morgan and many of his partners admitted that they had cora was born in paid no income tax in 1931 and 1932; they explained Nicosia, Sicily, on January 6, 1882, the son of Louis Pe- their failure to pay taxes by reference to their losses in cora and Rosa Messina who emigrated to the United the stock market's decline, but this explanation won States and New York City with his parents. He earned a law degree from and eventually them no sympathy. worked as an assistant district attorney in New York Pecora was meticulous in preparation and legendary City, during which time he helped shut down more than in stamina, mastering reams of material and staying up 100 bucket shops (seamy, fly-by-night brokerage half the night before interrogations, aided by John T. houses). Flynn, an Irish-American journalist, and , a Jewish . As Flynn wrote, “I looked with aston- Pecora was appointed Chief Counsel to the U.S. ishment at this man who, through the intricate mazes of Senate's Committee on Banking and Currency in the last banking, syndicates, market deals, chicanery of all sorts, months of the presidency and then and in a field new to him, never forgot a name, never continued under the Roosevelt administration. made an error in a figure, and never lost his temper.” The Senate committee hearings that Pecora led After Pecora closed his investigations, on July 2, probed the causes of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that 1934, President Roosevelt appointed Ferdinand J Pe- launched a major reform of the American financial sys- cora, the son of a Sicilian cobbler, a Commissioner of tem. Under Pecora’s expert and often withering ques- the newly formed U.S. Securities and Exchange Com- tioning, the Senate committee unearthed a secret finan- mission (SEC). He later became a judge of the New cial history of the 1920s, demystifying the assorted York State Supreme Court, a position he held until frauds, scams and abuses that culminated in the 1929 1950, when he ran unsuccessfully against Vincent R. Im- crash. Because of Pecora's high-profile work, the hear- ings soon acquired the popular name the Pecora Com- pellitteri for Mayor of New York City. mission, and Time magazine featured Pecora on the Ferdinand J Pecora passed away on December 7, cover of its June 12, 1933 issue. 1971. Pecora's investigation unearthed evidence of irregu- Source: New York Times / Wikipedia.org