The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora’s Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance, by Michael Perino, Penguin RRP$27.95, 352 pages.
Ferdinand Pecora’s famous 10-day investigation into the secrets of Wall Street in 1933 makes a superb story. The heavyweight battle waged in Room 301 of the Senate Office Building, between “the most brilliant cross-examiner in New York” and “the greatest bond salesman who ever lived”, has a hero, a villain and a million victims. It is a lesson in how the government should attack financial fraud. And now it has an ideal storyteller in Michael Perino, a law professor who has scoured transcripts and archives for details about the plot and characters.
Pecora was a little-known lawyer and political operative when Senator Peter Norbeck called him at home on a Sunday in January 1933, more than three years after the stock market crash. Norbeck, who had never heard of Pecora before that weekend, wanted a fill-in for the final six weeks of the Senate’s banking investigation, just until President-elect Franklin Roosevelt took office.