Grandma's army

  The Trust Company became one of the largest banks in the State of New Jersey the old-fashioned way, through internal growth: one customer at a time, one branch at a time. Siggi poured himself into building a loyal following by showing up, shaking hands, handing out gifts, listening to customers’ problems, and offering remedies. The FED, however, were not impressed by these small gestures, and would not allow Siggi to keep his companies together. He would have to use his prodigious brain to figure out what to do. The idea he conceived would be the most outrageous than any he had come up with before. In 1975 Siggi became the first person to sue the Federal Reserve. The FED’s formidable president, Paul Volcker, was six foot seven, the son of German immigrants. Memories of the Great Depression loomed over the pairing of commercial companies and banking, and Wilshire’s ownership of   TCNJ embodied everything “Big Paul” vowed to crush. Siggi’s response to the threat was that he wa