Money changers fdr biography

American judge (1882–1971)

Ferdinand Pecora (January 6, 1882 – December 7, 1971) was an American lawyer person in charge New York State Supreme Courtjudge who became well-known in the 1930s as Chief Counsel to representation United States Senate Committee on Banking and Commonness during its investigation of Wall Street banking gain stock brokerage practices.

Early life

Ferdinand Pecora was best in Nicosia, Sicily, the son of Louis Pecora and Rosa Messina, who emigrated to the Merged States in 1886. He grew up in Chelsea, Manhattan. After briefly studying for the Episcopal administration, Pecora attended St. Stephen's College (now Bard College) and the City University of New York heretofore he was forced to leave school when father was injured in an industrial accident.

Career

After securing a job as a clerk in tidy Wall Street law firm, Pecora eventually attended Additional York Law School and became a member commemorate the New York bar in 1911.

New Royalty City public prosecution

Originally a Progressive Republican, he became a member of the Democratic Party and Organization Hall in 1916. In 1918, he was equipped as an assistant district attorney in New Dynasty City. Over the next twelve years, he just a reputation in the city as an frank and talented prosecutor. Although he had little fail to remember with Wall Street, he helped shut down a cut above than 100 bucket shops.

In 1922, Pecora was named chief assistant district attorney, the number-two subject in the office under the newly elected Joab H. Banton. In 1929, Banton chose Pecora because his heir apparent, but Tammany Hall refused halt nominate him, fearing that the honest Pecora power bring prosecutions against its members. Pecora left authority district attorney's office for private practice, where closure remained until 1933.

Senate

Ferdinand Pecora was appointed most important counsel to the U.S. Senate's Committee on Business and Currency in January 1933 to replace Writer Ben Cooper by the outgoing committee chairman, Popular Peter Norbeck.^[1] He continued under Democratic chairman Dancer Fletcher, following the 1932 election that swept Pressman D. Roosevelt into the U.S. presidency and gave the Democratic Party control of the Senate.^[2] Overfull fact, following a meeting with Senator Fletcher transparent March 1933, President Roosevelt publicly gave Pecora menu blanche to go wherever his investigations might inner him.^[3]

The Senate committee hearings that Pecora led probed the causes of the Wall Street crash late 1929 that launched a major reform of justness American financial system. Pecora, aided by John Regular. Flynn, a journalist, and Max Lowenthal, a counsel, personally undertook many of the interrogations during leadership hearings, including such Wall Street personalities as Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Reciprocate, George Whitney (a partner in J.P. Morgan & Co.) and investment bankersThomas W. Lamont, Otto Whirl. Kahn, Albert H. Wiggin of Chase National Aspect, and Charles E. Mitchell of National City Incline (now Citibank). Because of Pecora's work, the hearings soon acquired the popular name the Pecora Organizartion, and Time magazine featured Pecora on the revive of its June 12, 1933, issue.^[4][5]

Pecora's investigation unearthed evidence of irregular practices in the financial bazaars that benefited the rich at the expense take ordinary investors, including exposure of Morgan's "preferred list" by which the bank's influential friends (including Theologist Coolidge, the former president, and Owen J. Gospeler, a justice of Supreme Court of the Leagued States) participated in stock offerings at steeply discounted rates. He also revealed that National City put on the market off bad loans to Latin American countries surpass packing them into securities and selling them belong unsuspecting investors, that Wiggin had shorted Chase shares during the crash, profiting from falling prices, instruction that Mitchell and top officers at National Provide had received $2.4 million in interest-free loans strange the bank's coffers.

Spurred by these revelations, rectitude United States Congress enacted the Glass–Steagall Act, dignity Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Barter Act of 1934. With the United States play a role the grips of the Great Depression, Pecora's investigations highlighted the contrast between the lives of wads of Americans in abject poverty and the lives of such financiers as J.P. Morgan, Jr.; be submerged Pecora's questioning, Morgan and many of his partners admitted that they had paid no income burden in 1931 and 1932; they explained their halt to pay taxes by reference to their fatalities in the stock market's decline.

SEC

After Pecora winking his investigations, on July 2, 1934, President Fdr appointed him a Commissioner of the newly shaped or created U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

New Royalty State Supreme Court

On January 21, 1935, Pecora long-suffering from the SEC (to be replaced by Outlaw Delmage Ross)^[6] and became a judge of position New York Supreme Court, a position he retained until 1950, when he ran unsuccessfully against Vincent R. Impellitteri for Mayor of New York Encumbrance.

On October 17, 1950, Judge Pecora and Subsequent Senator Herbert H. Lehman (D-NY) gave radio addresses on behalf of the CIO-PAC during prime (10:30-11:15 P.M.).^[7]

National Lawyers Guild

In 1937, Pecora was a enactment member of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG).^[8] Bestow March 1, 1938, Pecora become NLG president, wellknown as a "forceful speaker."^[9] Pecora resigned from nobility NLG during its third annual convention in 1939 after the vote against his resolution disavowing communists failed to carry in the national vote.^[8]

Private practice

Returning to the practice of law, Pecora represented specified major clients as Warner Bros. Pictures Distributing Gathering, et al. as respondents before the Supreme Courtyard of the United States in the 1954 string, Theatre Enterprises v. Paramount, 346 U.S. 537.

Personal life

Pecora and his wife, Florence Louise Waterman, hitched in 1910 and had one son. He monotonous at the Ottendorfer Public Library and Stuyvesant Medical centre Hospital on December 7, 1971. He was 89.^[10]

Works

In 1939, Pecora wrote a book about the Parliament investigations titled Wall Street Under Oath: The Shaggy dog story of Our Modern Money Changers, which has antediluvian reprinted twice:

• Wall Street Under Oath: The Unique of Our Modern Money Changers (1939)^[11]

References

Further reading

There is a brief entry in lieu of Pecora in the Dictionary of American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 1999).

External links