While the Roosevelt administration was busy resuscitating public confidence in the banks, Congress was punishing bankers for old violations of the public trust. In 1933 and 1934 sensational hearings were held that detailed larceny and fraud on the part of many bankers and other members of the business community, resulting in the introduction of the term bankster to the vocabulary. The Senate Banking and Currency Committee, led by New York jurist Ferdinand Pecora, revealed that the brokerage house of Lee, Higginson, and Company had defrauded the public of $100 million; that National City Bank head Charles E. Mitchell, with a salary of $1.2 million, paid no income tax and had issued $25 million in Peruvian bonds he knew to be worthless; that former secretary of the treasury Andrew Mellon and banker J. P. Morgan had also managed to avoid taxes;.....
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