reports the early 1970s origin and evolution of The Depository Trust Company (DTC), the world's largest securities depository, and how it became the basis of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) in 1999.

It describes the basic policies and company culture of DTC and DTCC and shows how these organizations made the clearance and settlement of virtually all trades in U.S. equity, corporate debt, and municipal securities more accurate and less costly, obliterating through automation the conditions that created the Wall Street "paperwork crisis" of the late 1960s.