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Jan. 2, 2009 (LPAC)--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. 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