Chairman of the RFC Jesse Jones pounding his fist to make a point to Chairman Henry B. Steagall and the House Banking and Currency Committee. (Courtesy, Library of Congress)
Jesse Jones, as chairman of the RFC, approved loans to the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad and then directed the railroad company to hire Wilson McCarthy as its president. The photograph, a gift to McCarthy and his wife, was signed, “for my friends Wilson and Minerva McCarthy with great…
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Owen Young (right), chairman of General Electric and partner of Charles Dawes, used his considerable influence to ensure the bailout of the Dawes bank. Young and Dawes (left), chairman of Central Republic Bank and Trust Company of Chicago, waiting to testify before the Senate committee investigating the Samuel Insull fiasco….
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Depositors’ run on John Walsh’s Chicago National Bank in 1905. Walsh, who was the partner of Charles Dawes and Samuel Insull in several gas deals, served three years at the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth for issuing fraudulent call reports, which concealed the massive insider abuse at his failed bank….
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Asking the superintendent to act
(Tribune archive photo)
A crowd of children and the unemployed marched to the office of Chicago Public Schools Superintendent William Bogan demanding free food in March 1932. During the Great Depression, teachers worked at reduced wages or went without pay in part because people were unable to pay their taxes.
Panic in Paradise is a comprehensive study of bank failures during the Florida land boom of the mid-1920s, during the years preceding the stock market crash of 1929.
Panic in the Loop reveals widespread fraud and insider abuse by bankers – and the complicity of corrupt politicians – that caused the Chicago banking debacle of 1932.