Impeccable Connections The Rise And Fall Of Richard Whitney [Paperback]

Impeccable Connections: The Rise and Fall of Richard Whitney traces the fascinating trajectory of a Massachusetts Brahmin who was president of the New York Stock Exchange in the early 1930s. Whitney fought every attempt by the Federal Government to regulate the exchange back then because it was perfect as it was. Widely regarded even by patrician friends as an insufferable snob, with a background from Groton, Harvard, and New Jersey foxhunting country, after Prohibition he bet all his money on a company called Distilled Liquors Corporation whose principal product was New Jersey lightning - hard cider. When lightning failed to strike, this symbol of Wall Street integrity tried to support his company's stock price by borrowing money and secretly stealing clients' assets to cover his mounting debts until the scheme finally collapsed and he went off to prison. A self-righteous confidence man - he couldn't get away with that today, could he? Read this spellbinding book, which repeatedly takes your breath away, and learn that some things never change. -Craig R. Whitney, author of Living with Guns: A Liberal's case for the Second Amendment. From the opening scene of Richard Whitney striding on to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Black Thursday, 1929 Malcolm Mackay had me hooked. The story of Whitney's rise and spectacular fall from grace is one of the great untold stories of American financial history no more. A fascinating book about one of the biggest scandals and scoundrels in American finance. Malcolm Mackay's tale of Richard Whitney's descent from Master of the fox hunt to prisoner at Sing Sing reads like a novel, but is unbelievably true! -Consuelo Mack, Anchor and Executive Producer, Consuelo Mack WealthTrack Malcolm MacKay has succeeded at the seemingly impossible task of writing a charming and sympathetic account of an utterly unsympathetic scoundrel. MacKay writes with an insider's knowledge of Richard Whitney (whom he personals-