Time to put "wealth on trial" again?

[Better Believe It]

Time to put "wealth on trial" again?

Congress needs to investigate the reasons behind the economic collapse -- the way Ferdinand Pecora probed the '29 market crash, and made tycoons confess their financial sins.
by Michael Winship
Salon.com
April 27, 2009

.... back in the '30s, during the depths of the Great Depression, Ferdinand Pecora emerged as an unlikely hero, leading a sensational Senate investigation of what caused the '29 market crash.

Under threat of subpoena and under oath, one tycoon after another -- including J.P. Morgan, Jr., of the House of Morgan and Charles "Sunshine Charley" Mitchell, chairman of First National City Bank (now Citigroup) -- was hauled before the committee and grilled relentlessly by Pecora.

The Pecora hearings resulted in 12,000 pages of transcripts that are still a primary source for historians of the Great Crash, and important New Deal legislation that for the first time regulated the high-handed, free-wheeling banking industry and protected the public from its excesses -- including the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (which established the Securities and Exchange Commission -- Pecora was one of its first commissioners) and the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, which erected a firewall between commercial and investment banking -- a wall torn down during the Clinton administration, leading to much of our trouble today.

.... an independent commission with subpoena power is the way to go; not yet another congressional investigation led by Senators and Representatives who have received political contributions from the very companies they'll be hauling in for questioning. As the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics has reported, for the last 20 years, the financial services industry has been the largest campaign contributor in every federal election cycle. In the last two years alone, individual and political action committee donations from Wall Street totaled $463.5 million.

Finally, unlike his opposition to an independent commission investigating allegations of torture, President Obama needs to get involved immediately and publicly back an independent Pecora-style commission's work. According to Michael Perino, "Roosevelt was a big booster for the hearings. He met secretly with Pecora on a number of occasions," as well as the committee chairmen.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/04/27/ferdinand_pecora/index.html

[leftstreet]

1. The markets are up. Everything's gonna be fine. Don't Worry, be Happy!

K&R