This is the first episode of Season 2 Decades we  dive into six decades of American financial hubris. We'll watch the same old play unfold. Hide the losses, budge the numbers, and believe your own story until the money dries up.

We'll go from the smoky back rooms of the 1970s to today's glass walled FinTech empires, because the rules may change, but the game never does..

A taste of the early 1970s, Franklin National Bank looked like the future of American finance. Its CEO, Harold Gleason, traded a quiet Long Island thrift for a lavish Park Avenue headquarters, convinced he could transform it into an international powerhouse. His secret weapon: Michele Sindona, the Vatican’s banker with mob ties and a taste for high-stakes foreign exchange bets.

The full podcast episode unpacks how Gleason’s ambition and Sindona’s schemes turned a conservative regional bank into a fragile giant—and how the façade collapsed in what was, at the time, the largest bank failure in U.S. history. Check out Episode page for the entire story.