The Hellhound of Wall Street: How
Ferdinand Pecora's Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed
Wall Street (Penguin 2010), by Michael Perino
Michael
Perino is currently the Dean George W. Matheson Professor of
Law at St. John’s University School of Law in New York. A
former Wall Street litigator, Professor Perino has testified in the
United States Senate and the House of Representatives and has
consulted with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He is
frequently quoted in the media on securities and corporate matters.
He has appeared on NPR's All Things
Considered, Morning Edition, and Marketplace,
on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and on
CNBC.
In
The Hellhound of Wall Street, Professor Perino
recounts in riveting detail the 1933 hearings in which Ferdinand
Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former New York prosecutor, put
Wall Street on trial for the Great Crash. 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.
Named one of the top 30 business books of 2010 by
Bloomberg,The Hellhound of Wall Street has been
described as a “page-turning history” (Business Week) and
a “crackerjack legal drama” (Publishers Weekly). The
Economist says that it “deftly sets the drama of the Senate
hearings within the wider cultural and political ferment” and “is
potent testimony to the way in which one person can help
crystallise the interpretation of an event.” The
Financial Times calls it a "superb story” of "a hero, a
villain and a million victims."