Both of today’s pictures come from The Picayune, editted and largely drawn by artist Frank Bellew. Their topics involve the financial crisis of Fall 1857. Below, from October 3, 1857, expresses the general feeling about Wall Street brokers following the collapse. This demonstrates how Wall Street throughout its history, and through its own selfish actions, has repeatedly lost the people’s trust. Whatever promises given today, if not legally binding, Wall Street will break tomorrow.

Click on any picture, to see an enlarged version.

Next, The Devil to Pay in Wall Street by Frank Bellew, at the start of the crisis. Published on September 5, 1857.

Click here to find both the prior Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons entries, and related I.T.C.H. posts. This series will continue, while the debate on financial reforms continues in Congress (except Mondays and holidays, on which I already had other material planned).

Series Refrain: 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.

Doug Wheeler

financial reform

BellewSr

NYPicayune