Time for a new "Pecora Commission"

From January 1933, the eve of Hitler's appointment to dictatorial power, through July 1934, under the Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, under the counsel of investigator Ferdinand Pecora, exposed the crimes of Wall Street. American statesman Lyndon LaRouche's call for a new "Pecora Commission," to break the power of London's Wall Street, offers again the opportunity to make that unique Constitution the world's "best chance" to avoid the plunge into economic ruin and chaos.

LPAC TV has made clear what a new "Pecora Commission" must accomplish (Click here). Doubters around the world, be they in Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi, or Berlin and Paris, among the citizenry of the United States, should take note.

Here is Pecora's Preface to his 1939 book "Wall Street Under Oath", appropriately written on the eve of World War II.

- Author's Preface -

Under the surface of the governmental regulation of the securities market, the same forces that produced the riotous speculative excesses of the "wild bull market" of 1929 still give evidences of their existence and influence. Though repressed for the present, it cannot be doubted that, given a suitable opportunity, they would spring back to pernicious activity. Frequently we are told that this regulation is throttling the country's prosperity. Bitterly hostile was Wall Street to the enactment of the regulatory legislation. It now looks forward to the day when it shall, as it hopes, resume the reins of its former power.

That its leaders are eminently fitted to guide our nation, and that they would make a much better job of it than any other body of men, Wall Street does not for a moment doubt. Indeed, if you now hearken to the oracles of The Street, you will hear now and then that the money-changers have been much maligned. You will be told that a group of high-minded men, innocent of social or economic wrongdoing, were expelled from the temple because of the excesses of a few. You will be assured they had nothing to do with the misfortunes which overtook the country in 1929-1933; that they were simply scapegoats sacrificed on the altar of unreasoning public opinion to satisfy the wrath of a howling mob blindly seeking victims.

These disingenuous protestations are, in the crisp of a legal phrase, "without merit." The case against money-changers does not rest on hearsay or surmise. It is based upon a mass of evidence, given publicly and under oath before the Banking and Currency Committee of the United States Senate between 1933-1934, by The Street's mightiest and best-informed men. Their testimony is recorded in twelve thousand printed pages. It covers all the ramifications and phases of Wall Street's manifold operations. The public, however, is sometimes forgetful. As its memory of the unhappy market collapse of 1929 becomes blurred, it may lend at least one ear to the voices of The Street subtly pleading for a return "to the good old times." Forgotten, perhaps, by some are the shattering revelations of the Senate Committee's investigations, forgotten the practices and ethics that The Street followed and defended when its own sway was undisputed in the good old days.

After five short years, we may now need to be reminded what Wall Street was like before Uncle Sam stationed a policeman at its corner, lest, in time to come, some attempts be made to abolish that post. It is in the hope of rendering this service, especially for the lay reader unfamiliar with the terminology and conduct of The Street, that the author has endeavored, in the following pages, to summarize the essential story of that investigation-an inquiry which cast a vivid light upon the unhabitated mores and methods of Wall Street.

Ferdinand Pecora

New York City

February, 1939