He is the man who led the investigation of the fraud and other criminal behaviour that led to the Wall Street crash of 1929, which started off the great depression. The story of his investigation is amazing, and couldn´t be more appropriate for a major film production. It has everything, including the David and Goliath theme, where Pecora was a lowly Italian immigrant, who was aided by a staff of two people, taking on the giants of Wall Street on behalf of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency. With only a staff of two people, obviously they weren´t supposed to uncover anything. Except they did, and the Committee hearings became major news at the time, letting out a huge public outrcy over the greed and fraud that had brought about the depression. The populist nature of the hearings irritated a lot of people, including a senator who compared the hearings to a circus. This comment was famously siezed by a Wringling Brothers promoter, who brought along a circus dwarf to sit on the lap of J.P. Morgan, who had been grilled by Pecora.
All of this was huge news at the time and it seems like the action of bringing in these people for public questioning led to a sense of justice being done, that these powerful bankers could not act with impunity (at least not all of the time). More importantly, the hearings led to the Glass Steagal Act of 1933 and the foundation of the SEC (Securitites and Exchange Commission), which stabilzed the U.S. economy for about half a century until neoliberal ideas of deregulation got the best of us.
Go to the excellent Bill Moyers Journal for more info on Ferdinand Pecora the Pecora hearings and an interview with Michael Perino who´s writing Pecora´s biography.
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