Investigating the Financial Crisis and My Passion for Borsalino Hats is an outstanding post by Stephen Lewis — one that characteristically combines several things I didn’t know, starting with a helpful suggestion for incoming administration: a sweeping inquest into the twin housing and stock market crashes to create both the intellectual context and the political constituency for change.
Those words, and the original suggestion (which Steve endorses) are Ron Chernow’s, offered in Where is Our Ferdinand Pecora?, in the New York Times. Turns out Pecora was the former New York proscecutor brought in as chief counsel for the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, which investigated the financial meltdown that ushered in the Great Depression.
I won’t give away the rest of Steve’s story. I’ll just say that anybody who grew up around New York in the mid-to-late 20th Century should be familiar with the setting, if not the characters: Barney’s, the men’s clothing store at the corner of 7th Avenue and 17th Street — a location I recall from having it drilled into my head by decades of radio advertising.
Go read the post. And my “lid” is off to Steve for writing it. Great story.
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