Crooked book-keepers absconding with funds, is hardly new, as witness this cartoon from the rear cover of the first issue of Judge magazine, October 29, 1881. Neither the cartoon, nor the prose inside the issue, give clue to what real incident at the time inspired this cartoon, but something must have been going on at the time — Livingston Hopkins would produce a second cartoon for Judge on this subject, three issues later, plus Puck and the (New York) Daily Graphic, also had cartoons involving bank embezzlement, around this same time.

Click on picture, to see an enlarged version.

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

JudgeMag