Who is Pecora? The "Pecora Commission?

Ferdinand Pecora's preface to his 1939 book "Wall Street Under Oath"

http://www.larouchepac.com/news/2008/12/31/lpactv-straighten-your-pecora.html
Jan. 2, 2009 (LPAC)

--From January 1933, the eve of Hitler's
appointment to dictatorial power, through July 1934, under the
Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the U.S. Senate
Committee on Banking and Currency, under the counsel of
investigator Ferdinand Pecora, exposed the crimes of Wall Street.
American statesman Lyndon LaRouche's call for a new "Pecora
Commission," to break the power of London's Wall Street, offers
again the opportunity to make that unique Constitution the
world's "best chance" to avoid the plunge into economic ruin and
chaos.

LPAC TV has made clear what a new "Pecora Commission" must
accomplish. Doubters around the world, be they in Moscow,
Beijing, New Delhi, or Berlin and Paris, among the citizenry of
the United States, should take note.

Here is Pecora's Preface to his 1939 book {Wall Street
Under Oath}, appropriately written on the eve of World War II.

- Author's Preface -

Under the surface of the governmental regulation of the
securities market, the same forces that produced the riotous
speculative excesses of the "wild bull market" of 1929 still give
evidences of their existence and influence. Though repressed for
the present, it cannot be doubted that, given a suitable
opportunity, they would spring back to pernicious activity.

Frequently we are told that this regulation is throttling
the country's prosperity. Bitterly hostile was Wall Street to the
enactment of the regulatory legislation. It now looks forward to
the day when it shall, as it hopes, resume the reins of its
former power.

That its leaders are eminently fitted to guide our nation,
and that they would make a much better job of it than any other
body of men, Wall Street does not for a moment doubt. Indeed, if
you now hearken to the oracles of The Street, you will hear now
and then that the money-changers have been much maligned. You
will be told that a group of high-minded men, innocent of social
or economic wrongdoing, were expelled from the temple because of
the excesses of a few. You will be assured they had nothing to do
with the misfortunes which overtook the country in 1929-1933;
that they were simply scapegoats sacrificed on the altar of
unreasoning public opinion to satisfy the wrath of a howling mob
blindly seeking victims.

These disingenuous protestations are, in the crisp of a
legal phrase, "without merit." The case against money-changers
does not rest on hearsay or surmise. It is based upon a mass of
evidence, given publicly and under oath before the Banking and
Currency Committee of the United States Senate between 1933-1934,
by The Street's mightiest and best-informed men. Their testimony
is recorded in twelve thousand printed pages. It covers all the
ramifications and phases of Wall Street's manifold operations.

The public, however, is sometimes forgetful. As its memory
of the unhappy market collapse of 1929 becomes blurred, it may
lend at least one ear to the voices of The Street subtly pleading
for a return " to the good old times." Forgotten, perhaps, by
some are the shattering revelations of the Senate Committee's
investigations, forgotten the practices and ethics that The
Street followed and defended when its own sway was undisputed in
the good old days.

After five short years, we may now need to be reminded what
Wall Street was like before Uncle Sam stationed a policeman at
its corner, lest, in time to come, some attempts be made to
abolish that post.

It is in the hope of rendering this service, especially for
the lay reader unfamiliar with the terminology and conduct of The
Street, that the author has endeavored, in the following pages,
to summarize the essential story of that investigation--an
inquiry which cast a vivid light upon the unhabitated mores and
methods of Wall Street.

Ferdinand Pecora
New York City
February, 1939