Randa Abdelfattah and Ramteen Arablui

People were outraged.

They were like, oh my goodness, I cannot believe that one of these richest people in America is not paying any taxes.

And J.P.

Morgan says, hey, no one regrets that more than I do.

I wasn't paying taxes because I was losing money.

How could I pay taxes on money I wasn't making?

In other words, because he hadn't made a profit those years after the stock market crash, technically he didn't have any taxable income and hadn't evaded taxes.

Who do you blame in that moment?

Do you blame the taxpayer, J.P.

Morgan, who's taking advantage of the law as best he can to minimize his taxes?

Or do you blame the law and say, hey, Congress shouldn't have written the law like this in the first place?

You know, you can go either way on that.

The committee interviewed a series of other bankers.

And by the end, it was clear.

Unchecked stock market speculation was one of the factors that had sent the economy and the American banking system into collapse.

So Congress quickly moved to pass a series of laws to regulate the stock market and put more checks in place on bankers to prevent them from gambling with people's money.

But the tax question remained.

What is the moral status of tax avoidance?

It may be legal, but is it moral?

FDR took this up as his personal fight.