Sep

16

One attended a lecture By Malcolm MacKay, author of Impeccable Connections, about the rise and fall of Richard Whiteny, who was the face of the stock market during 1920-1936 before going broke pegging the stock of a distillery in New Jersey whose game plan was to sweep the nation with apple jack after prohibition was repealed. Whitney spent 3 years in jail and had the entitlement that one often sees among the white shoes whereby when he was in trouble he'd go up to his worst enemy on the floor and ask him, "spot me 250,000 on my face" for a few months as I'm behind on some debts. He had 15 outdoor servants and 5,000 acres on his hunting estate in short hills so often he was in debt. He believed in free enterprise and thus was assured of getting bad press but he deserved it, as he showed no remorse for all the millions he embezzled. Fortuitously he embezzled so much from the NY Yacht Club that they had to sell their adjacent property to the Harvard Club where the lecture was held, and where the present author was not on the losing side of the lead up to the Nationals there for 10 years. He jauntily walked into the US steel pit on black Thursday and bid up the shares of all the blue chips thus temporarily stemming the tide of black Thursday so that stocks closed down only 3.5 %^. His brother ultimately paid off all his debts, and knew of his transgressions but was advised by the senior Davis law firm not to bail out a wrong doer as he might be an accessory to the crime.

Whiteny always wore his Porcelain pin and got some good hits on the prison baseball team playing first base. The wife came back to him after his mistress left him shortly before he entered Sing Sing where he was called Mr. Whitney, and the prisoners stepped aside when he passed. He ultimately tended a farm in Mass, and started a mail order orange company in Florida which he kindly offered at cost to his Harvard classmates on his 50th reunion book. He was the bond broker for the Morgan Bank interests during his heyday.

One should add that I had two distinguished guests with me, the father of market psychology, Mr. Brett, and Mr Siskind, the king of real estate deals during the last 50 years. Brett wondered whether Mr. Whitney had bi-polar disease and Donald Siskind noted that his personality was very similar to many of the real estate developers of the the previous generation. I would note that he reminded me of Peter Peterson who would throw out memos on the floor on the understanding that the servants would pick them up and transcribe them. It should be noted that Peterson once told me that Lorie liked to call him whenever there was a new joke, and didn't hesitate to do so during the Oct 19, 1987, crash interrupting Peterson from a board meeting.


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