Economics
J.P. Morgan's Character Lesson
Honesty, integrity, trust -- they're old-fashioned concepts in this Age of Enron, and their scarcity endangers America's future
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By Christopher Farrell
One of the most famous exchanges in the history of finance took place almost a century ago on Capitol Hill. An aging J.P. Morgan, the most powerful financier in the world and America's unofficial central banker, testified before a House committee investigating the tangled web of financial interests that dominated the economy of the emerging industrial nation. Morgan's inquisitor was Samuel Untermyer, a tough corporate lawyer.