The Onion Futures Act
How a 1958 Market Corner Made Onion Futures Illegal

About this book:

In 1958, a single man held the American dinner table hostage. Vincent Kosuga, a brazen speculator on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, executed a ruthless corner on the onion futures market—driving prices to historic highs before flooding the market with millions of pounds of the vegetable, crashing the price and ruining farmers overnight. *The Onion Futures Act* pulls back the curtain on this astonishing, forgotten crime, revealing how a humble bulb became the weapon of choice for one of the most audacious market manipulations in U.S. history.

The fallout didn't just stay in the trading pits. It exploded onto the national stage, thrusting a young Michigan Congressman named Gerald Ford into the spotlight. As farmers demanded justice and free-market purists cried foul, Ford navigated a firestorm of lobbying and political pressure to achieve the impossible: a bipartisan, permanent congressional ban on trading futures for a single commodity. It remains the only law of its kind in American history.

Part financial thriller, part political origin story, this book traces the wild ride from the "black dirt" fields of New York to the smoke-filled rooms of Capitol Hill. It is a timeless cautionary tale about the vulnerability of unregulated markets, the power of concentrated capital, and the rare moment when Washington actually moved fast enough to stop a predator in his tracks.