Who Was A More Corrupt Businessman; Joe Kennedy Sr. or Fred Trump?

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Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. - Wikipedia.

10 Terrible Things Done By JFK's Father - Listverse

Joseph Kennedy knew how to make money. By the time he’d turned 25, he was already the president of a bank, the youngest in America. He got rich by working hard and making smart decisions, but he turned that wealth into a fortune by cheating on the stock market.

Kennedy turned the stock market into a gold mine by using tricks that, today, are illegal. He used insider trading, created artificial scarcities to drive up stocks, and sold other ones short to drive them down. It was all unethical, but at the time, it wasn’t illegal, and Kennedy’s fortune soared.

He knew what he was doing. Encouraging a classmate to do the same, Kennedy said, “It’s easy to make money in this market. We’d better get in before they pass a law against it.”

Someone did pass a law against it: Joseph Kennedy. In 1934, Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Kennedy the head of the SEC, saying, “It takes a crook to catch a crook.” He was right. Kennedy criminalized insider trading, making it a crime to use the very tricks that made him his fortune.

When Prohibition came into effect, rumors that Kennedy was a rum runner spread wildly. Allegations came from everywhere. The gangsters Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky both accused Kennedy of being a bootlegger. Another rumor put him as Sam Giancana’s partner in crime. And a piano tuner working for Al Capone claimed that he saw Kennedy sit down with whiskey baron to talk business.

None of these stories have ever been proven, but we do know some things for sure. In 1922, Kennedy kept the liquor flowing at his Harvard 20th reunion. And, when Prohibition ended, Kennedy already had a whole stock of liquor ready to sell across the country.

Kennedy claims all this liquor was acquired legally, and it’s quite possible that the whole rumor was just a way to run his name through the mud. One way or another, though, Kennedy was a businessman. Whether he started selling liquor during Prohibition or after, he saw a business opportunity and capitalized on it.

Fred Trump - Wikipedia