The 18th Amendment

The stealing lamp was lit. Lucky Luciano. Joe Kennedy. The 18th amendment survived 13 years. Its impact lives

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Luciano

On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, and Prohibition lasted until the amendment was repealed in 1933. The Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. As there was still a substantial demand for alcohol, this provided criminals with an added source of income.

By 1925, Luciano was grossing over $12 million a year ($ 200 million 2015 dollars). He had a net income of around $4 million ($70 million 2015 dollars) each year after the costs of bribing politicians and police. Luciano and his partners ran the largest bootlegging operation in New York, one that also extended into Philadelphia. He imported Scotch whisky fromScotland, rum from the Caribbean, and whisky from Canada. Luciano was also involved in illegal gambling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy,_Sr.
Wall Street and stock market investments[edit]

In 1919, Kennedy joined the prominent stock brokerage firm of Hayden, Stone & Co. where he became an expert in dealing in the unregulated stock market of the day, engaging in tactics that were later labeled insider trading and market manipulation. He happened to be on the corner of Wall and Broad Streets at the moment of the Wall Street bombing on September 16, 1920, and was thrown to the ground by the force of the blast.^[23] In 1923, he left Hayden and set up his own investment company. Kennedy subsequently became a multi-millionaire during the bull market of the 1920s, and even more wealthy as a result of taking "short" positions in 1929.

David Kennedy, author of Freedom From Fear, describes the Wall Street of the Kennedy era:

[It] was a strikingly information-starved environment. Many firms whose securities were publicly traded published no regular reports or issued reports whose data were so arbitrarily selected and capriciously audited as to be worse than useless. It was this circumstance that had conferred such awesome power on a handful of investment bankers like J. P. Morgan, because they commanded a virtual monopoly of the information necessary for making sound financial decisions. Especially in the secondary markets, where reliable information was all but impossible for the average investor to come by, opportunities abounded for insider manipulation and wildcat speculation.

1929 Wall Street Crash[edit]

Kennedy formed alliances with several other Irish-Catholic investors, including Charles E. Mitchell, Michael J. Meehan, and Bernard Smith. He helped establish the Libby-Owens-Ford stock pool, an arrangement in which Kennedy and colleagues created a scarcity of Libby-Owens-Ford stock to drive up the value of their own holdings in the stock, using inside information and the public's lack of knowledge. Pool operators would bribe journalists to present information in the most advantageous manner. Attempts to corner stocks were made that would cause the price to go up, and bear raids could cause the price to collapse downward. Kennedy got into a bidding war seeking control of founder John D. Hertz's company Yellow Cab.^[24]

Kennedy later claimed he knew the rampant stock speculation of the late 1920s would lead to a market crash. It is said that he knew it was time to get out of the market when he received stock tips from a shoe-shine boy.^[25] Kennedy survived the crash "because he possessed a passion for facts, a complete lack of sentiment and a marvelous sense of timing".^[26]

During the Great Depression Kennedy vastly increased his financial fortune by investing most of it in real estate. In 1929, Kennedy's fortune was estimated to be $4 million (equivalent to $55.1 million today).^[18] By 1935, his wealth had increased to $180 million (equivalent to $3.11 billion today).^[18]

18th Amendment

After Prohibition of alcohol ended in 1933, Kennedy consolidated an even larger fortune when he traveled toScotland with Roosevelt's son James to negotiate contracts for distribution rights for Scotch whisky. His company, Somerset Importers, became the exclusive American agent for Gordon's Gin and Dewar's Scotch. In addition, Kennedy purchased spirits-importation rights from Schenley Industries, a firm in Canada.^[2] He owned the largest office building in the country, Chicago's Merchandise Mart, giving his family an important base in that city and an alliance with the Irish-American political leadership there.