Morgan, Carnegie, Astor, Mellon
Every U. S. schoolboy knows the names of dozens of U. S. financiers who have been spectacular in their successes, but for brilliant colossal failures the palm must go to Britain. Boston had its Ponzi, who failed in 1920 for about $3,000,000. The agile Jay Gould sold $5,000,000 worth of fraudulent stock in the Erie Railroad. But in 1892 Britain's Jabez Spencer Balfour wiped out $50,000,000 with his disastrous Liberator Building Society. In 1896, $7,500,000 worth of other peoples money vanished in the hands of London's plausible Ernest Terah Hooley....
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