Joseph P.
Kennedy
BackGround
Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr. (September 6, 1888 – November 18, 1969) was the son of P.J. Kennedy, and three of his children reached distinguished careers of their own in politics: President John F. Kennedy, Senator and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and lifelong Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy. Joseph was born after his father found success in the saloon business, so he lived a comfortable childhood in a politically active, democratic, Irish catholic family. Joseph Kennedy was the first of his direct family to attend college; however, it is worth it to mention that he attended Harvard College in the footsteps of two of his older cousins. Joseph thrived at Harvard, joining prestigious fraternities and final clubs. Joseph went on to marry Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald, daughter of Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald (a political rival to PJ Kennedy, Joseph’s father). Joseph Kennedy never built a successful business of his own per se, but he amassed a modest fortune after using family money and influence to make himself the president of the Columbia Trust Company at the age of 25,
which he then invested in the stock market, where he often benefited from insider trading practices that were legal at the time but would be banned later on. Joseph was always known for his eye in value; his timing when buying and selling investments was impeccable. He made deals with everyone from J.P. Morgan to the federal government to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Joseph entirely avoided the stock market crash of 1929, which marks the beginning of the Great Depression, claiming that he knew the market was no good when a shoeshine boy gave him stock tips. What is more likely is that the same insider trading and market manipulation that made Kennedy wealthy gave him all the data he needed to know a bubble had formed. After the crash, Kennedy invested his money in real estate, paying pennies on the dollar for properties all over the United States, and particularly in Boston. From stocks, and especially real estate, Joseph Kennedy became one of the wealthiest people in America, with a peak net worth around $4 billion, adjusting for inflation. Joseph Kennedy was also invested in filmmaking, where he owned a controlling share of studio RKO. There are also rumours from mob bosses and underlings that Joseph Kennedy was involved in bootlegging illegal alcohol during the Prohibition era, although no scholar has been able to confirm this definitively.
Building A fortune
Joseph Kennedy’s political career started in earnest when he invested a small fortune in the election campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Roosevelt was elected (to an unprecedented, and unmatchable, four terms in office) President of the United States. To pay back the favor, Joseph was made ambassador for the United States to the United Kingdom, where he wined and dined with London High Society. One of his daughters, Kathleen, married into the English aristocracy. Kennedy was abruptly expelled from his position during the Battle of Britain, when Kennedy
insisted to both politicians and the public that Britain would not survive the war, and expressed sympathy with Nazi Germany’s increasingly anti-semitic policies. Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. As the head of the SEC, Kennedy aggressively pursued and outlawed the very type of insider trading and market manipulation from which he became fabulously wealthy, and which lead to the collapse in 1929. Kennedy withdrew from the public spotlight and politics following a stroke in 1961. He died in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts in 1969.