The Second Crash: How the Stock Market Went the 1929 Route in 1970

This book is about the panic on wall street. It starts with the imagined collapse of Haden, Stone, one of the five largest firms on the Street, which in truth found itself in financial hot water in 1969 and 1970, and which was saved at the last second because Mr. Jack E. Golsen, of Oklahoma City, acceded to the requests and pleadings of the New York Stock Exchange officials and bailed the brokerage house out. In this remarkable description of a crash that almost happened and that could still happen today, Mr. Ellis merely assumes tht Golsen ( who actually said to Felix Rohatyn, Chairman of the Big Board's Crisis Committee, " OK, Felix, you've got a deal") said ( as he had every right to say,) " Sorry Felix, no deal." With that refusal would have followed the worst stock market crash in history, which Ellis describes in full and absolutely convincing detail, revealing the truth about the investment community's business morality, its political organization and its haphazard economic structure , and showing, in the words of one of the survivors of the second crash, that "Every time I go to Vegas I think of Wall Street.. Big money is on the line all the time."