Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons, Part 01: “Capital One Million”, Financial Fraud Parody, 1856
Bank frauds and Wall Street swindles, resulting in economic ruin for everyone else, were regular and frequent occurrences prior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s institution of laws designed to prevent further Great Depressions. These regulations worked until, starting in the 1980s, conservatives began dismantling those protections, stating that we’d be better off with an unfettered and unregulated market, free to do whatever it wants. Wall Street firms swore at that time, that they’d learned the lessons of the Great Depression, and could be trusted to not engage in dangerous practices.
Bull****!
If there is one lesson from the various economic collapses throughout history, it’s that human greed is eternal. There will always be selfish fools, who grab for themselves without care for the damage they inflict on others.
And so, as Congress debates new regulations, let’s begin a review of the cartoons that these greedy souls have inspired…
The following comic sequence, Capital One Million, appeared in an October 1856 issue of the Illustrated London News. It’s depiction of a firm that sets a trap for its investors, drives prices high, and then collapses, is a perfect match for today’s Senate grilling of the CEO of Goldman-Sachs, accused of selling to their investors an investment designed to fail…
Click on picture to see an enlarged version.
Doug Wheeler
financial reform
— Doug
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