Vanity Fair

“Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory,” his lawyer had told me. “If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”

Pecora did not live to see the truth of his predictions borne out. Deregulation, which had begun to gather momentum in the 1970s, made enormous progress over later decades. In 1999 the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed—opening the door to the Mitchell-style fusion of commercial and investment banking (and with similar consequences). The S.E.C. in the early 2000s was significantly weakened. Inevitably, the financial crisis that began to unfold in 2008 would bring the Pecora Commission back into public visibility.