The Great Salad Oil Swindle - Bad Ideas

Soy Bean oil doesn't SEEM like the kind of thing that could crash the entire American Economy, but in 1963 that's almost what happened. Tino De Angelis was the biggest holder of salad oil in the world; at least on paper. And the paper that SAID it came from American Express, so it COULDN'T be wrong, could it? Despite the fact that Tino had a number of shady business deals in his past banks were more than willing to continue to lend him money as long as American Express said he had oil to back the loans. American Express was more than willing to continue to say he had the oil because Tino was literally the only profitable account on the books in their fledgling warehousing division. No one really cared that strange calls were coming from an anonymous whistleblower saying that Tino was fudging the numbers on how much oil he had by huge margins. And he might have gotten away with it all, if only he hadn't gotten involved in trying to corner the oil futures market.

You can listen to The Great Salad Oil Swindle - Bad Ideas online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Great Salad Oil Swindle - Bad Ideas is an episode from Bad Ideas Podcast by Human Echoes LLC.

This episode is 38:34 long.

This episode was published on May 8, 2020.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Bad Ideas Podcast when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.