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The Hellhound of Wall Street
Michael Perino
How Ferdinand Pecora's Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance
Penguin Press
October 2010
On Sale: October 14, 2010
352 pages
ISBN: 1594202729
EAN: 9781594202728
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A gripping account of the underdog Senate lawyer who
unmasked the financial wrongdoing that led to the Crash of
1929 and forever changed the relationship between Washington
and Wall Street. In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino recounts in
riveting detail the 1933 hearings that put Wall Street on
trial for the Great Crash. Never before in American history
had so many financial titans been called to account before
the public, and they had come within a few weeks of emerging
unscathed. By the time Ferdinand Pecora, a Sicilian
immigrant and former New York prosecutor, took over as chief
counsel, the investigation had dragged on ineffectively for
nearly a year and was universally written off as dead. The Hellhound of Wall Street provides a minute-by-minute
account of the ten dramatic days when Pecora turned the
hearings around, cross- examining the officers of National
City Bank (today's Citigroup), particularly its chairman,
Charles Mitchell, one of the best known bankers of his day.
Mitchell strode into the hearing room in obvious disdain for
the proceedings, but he left utterly disgraced. Pecora's
rigorous questioning revealed that City Bank was guilty of
shocking financial abuses, from selling worthless bonds to
manipulating its stock price. Most offensive of all was the
excessive compensation and bonuses awarded to its executives
for peddling shoddy securities to the American public. Pecora became an unlikely hero to a beleaguered nation. The
man whom the press called "the hellhound of Wall Street" was
the son of a struggling factory worker. Precocious and
determined, he became one of New York's few Italian American
lawyers at a time when Italians were frequently stereotyped
as anarchic criminals. The image of an immigrant lawyer
challenging a blue-blooded Wall Street tycoon was just one
more sign that a fundamental shift was taking place in America. By creating the sensational headlines needed to galvanize
public opinion for reform, the Pecora hearings spurred
Congress to take unprecedented steps to rein in the
freewheeling banking industry and led directly to the New
Deal's landmark economic reforms. A gripping courtroom drama
with remarkable contemporary relevance, The Hellhound of
Wall Street brings to life a crucial turning point in
American financial history.
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