Economic History · Divergence
The Panic of 1907 & the Birth of the Fed
A failed copper corner, runs on unregulated trust companies, and J.P. Morgan acting as a one-man central bank: how the Panic of 1907 led through the Aldrich–Vreeland Act and the secret Jekyll Island meeting to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Step 1 of 6 · Overview30 min read ·
Key idea
Prereqs: Banking basics; Bank runs. Next: The Great Depression; How the Fed works. Sources: Robert Bruner & Sean Carr, *The Panic of 1907* (2007); Federal Reserve History (federalreservehistory.org); Roger Lowenstein, *America's Bank* (2015).Next: 1. The fuse