Book Nook: Gonzo Wall Street

Before there were SPACs, before there were meme stocks, before there was the 2008 bailout, there was Wall Street in the 1960s. Today, we remember the sixties for the Vietnam War, assassinations, women’s and gay liberation movements, and the drugs that were changing American culture. Hidden from view, though, was Wall Street, where bankers were living large, and a crisis was brewing that would cause more investment banks to fail than during the Great Depression–and set the stage for the 2008 Wall Street bailout.

Finance attorney Richard E. Farley’s book, GONZO WALL STREET: RIOTS, RADICALS, RACISM, AND REVOLUTION: How the Go-Go Bankers of the 1960s Crashed the Financial System and Bamboozled Washington (Regan Arts) unveils this history for the first time–and shows what this forgotten Wall Street era tells us about finance in 2022.

Farley takes us back to 1968, when Wall Street witnessed the greatest bull market since the Roaring ’20s. The Dow was breaking records. Trading volume was exploding. A hot IPO market for high-flying technology companies was defying gravity. Traders were partying like sixties rock stars. Despite how flush Wall Street firms looked to outsiders, the banks were falling apart. When business exploded in 1968, they were so overwhelmed by the stacks of stock certificates piled from floor to ceiling that their antiquated back offices could not process them–and the failing banks held Congress over a barrel and got an outrageous taxpayer-funded bailout of what they owed their customers.

GONZO WALL STREET shows how the sixties set the stage for the financial corruption of today. The stranger than fiction stories include:

●      Tino De Angelis, the Salad Oil Swindler who took down a prominent investment bank on the day President Kennedy was assassinated—and nearly took down many more.

●      John Coleman, the most powerful man on Wall Street in the twentieth century that you have never heard of—and why he liked it that way.

●      Francine Gottfried, the humble heroine whose dignity in the face of cruel mistreatment as a result of her voluptuous figure inspired a revolution for women on Wall Street.

●      Roy Cohn, the target of an S.E.C. enforcement proceedings and multiple criminal indictments, who beat the federal government in three trials and prevailed upon President Nixon to ax the chairman of the S.E.C. and US Attorney for the Southern District of NY.

●      The Hard Hat Riot of blue-collar builders of the World Trade Center who turned on the antiwar protestors and ushered in the backlash.

●      The last IPO of the Go-Go Era—and perhaps the most outrageous offering in history—was of the magazine that discovered Hunter Thompson and gave birth to Gonzo Journalism. 

A story of corruption and financial malfeasance, GONZO WALL STREET unfolds throughout the tumultuous 1960s, during the administrations of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon with a surprising cast of famous and infamous characters playing roles: Abbie Hoffman, Ross Perot, Donald Regan, Michael Bloomberg, Felix Rohatyn, Sandy Weill, Ken Langone, and many others. 

About Richard E. Farley

Richard E. Farley is an attorney in New York and the author of Wall Street Wars. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and many other publications. He is the 2012 recipient of Bloomberg BNA’s Burton Award for Legal Achievement for best law firm writers.