One banker's private bailout stopped the 1907 crash, and it created the Fed

When a failed stock corner triggered runs on New York trust companies in 1907, there was no central bank to step in. J.P. Morgan gathered the city's bankers into his library and pressured them into propping up the system with their own money. The near-miss convinced Congress to create the Federal Reserve six years later.

— Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr, The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm — Wiley, 2007
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