Talk:Panic of 1907
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[edit] Comment
To the authors of Panic 1907:
I read with interest the existing article on this important and timely topic and noticed several (what I believe are) inaccuracies. Based on my reading of the many New York Times articles written at the time, I think the Heinze's bank was the Mercantile, not the Knickerbocker Trust. Heinze was later indicted for alleged violations of banking law relating to a loan he made from the Mercantile to himself to fund his brothers' firm's repurchase of United Copper Stock. (He was ultimately acquitted). One of the major trigger points of the panic was the inability of the Heinzes to purchase all of the shares of Copper stock which flooded the market in October 1907 after the Heinzes tried to corner the market in United Copper. I don't think Knickerbocker was a Heinze bank.
The Knickerbocker was implicated in the panic through Charles Morse. Morse was a speculator who was involved with the Heinzes in the so-called Copper Pool which at the time was trying to corner the United Copper market and squeeze out the short interest which it believed was driving the price down. When the Heinzes made their move to corner United Copper, Morse apparently dumped his shares into the market. The Heinzes couldn't find funds to purchase all of the stock dumped into the market and believing that Morse was a seller approached Morse to have him buy back his shares. As the panic unfolded, Morse, through his bank, the Bank of North America, made a deposit in the Knickerbocker Trust which then made a loan back to Morse. It was subsequently alleged that this transaction, as well as others Morse engaged in through the Bank of North America constituted violations of banking law by Morse.
As the panic unfolded, confidence in the New York banks and trust companies was drained and depositors feared for the safety of their deposits. When it came to light that the Knickerbocker, through its President, Charles Barney, had been transacting business with Morse, Barney resigned. A run on the Knickerbocker was begun and while it was initially expected that the New York banking community would support the trust, support did not materialize and the Knickerbocker failed. As the failure of additional trust companies loomed, JP Morgan and other banking leaders did ultimately step in and provide liquidity and total disaster was averted.
Unfortunately, it was too late for Barney. Humiliated by the failure of his bank, the Knickerbocker, Barney committed suicide. He was never accused of wrong-doing and both his estate and the Knickerbocker were found to have been solvent. Morse was indicted and ultimately convicted of violations of bank law and he served two years in Federal prison before his sentence was commuted by President Taft. Heinze was acquitted of wrong-doing in connection with the Mercantile Bank loan and spent the few remaining years of his life trying to reestablish his fortune.
Skipjen (talk) 10:41, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I deleted "relatively" from the first sentence of the article -- as in "the panic was a relatively serious economic downturn." It struck me as an unsupported subjective viewpoint, and also seemed to contradict information later in the article. (E.g., "the severity was such that Congress was moved to form the Federal Reserve Bank" -- I am paraphrasing here.) It's possible that this panic really was only "relatively" serious when compared to others, but I think it would be better to provide some real indication of the scope, rather than use a vague modifier like "relatively". For instance, X number of banks were forced to close, etc.
There are also two instances of "Panic" being capitalized where perhaps it shouldn't be. (One at the end of the first paragraph -- "the fourth Panic in 34 years" -- and another in the second paragraph where the event is referred to merely as "the Panic.") I was going to change both to lowercase, but there have already been edits on the case of those words so I let them be.
Finally, I wonder about the last sentence in the first paragraph (i.e., "the fourth Panic in 34 years"). The argument for inclusion is probably that it provides context -- this wasn't just one isolated panic. But the numbers used are odd. Why 34 years? Why the last four panics? Was the period before ~1870 especially quiet? Did Congress refer especially to these four panics when ordering the creation of the Federal Reserve? Would it suffice to say, "The Panic of 1907 was just one in a series of panics that swept Wall Street in the years following --some event-- or leading up to --some event--"? I don't know enough about this topic to make the edit myself, but that is a question I have as a reader. --Mbennardo 15:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I added another sentence to the end of the article about the creation of Federal Reserve Bank in response to the Panic of 1907. I think this closes the loop on the effect of the panic... The Fed was mentioned in the first paragraph, but never again. Perhaps this addition is outside the scope of the article, but since the article on the Federal Reserve Act mentions the Panic of 1907, it seemed to make sense to reciprocate.
--Mbennardo 15:35, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Unreferenced?
This article has an "Unreferenced" template tag which says "This article does not cite any references or sources," but there are number of references at the bottom of the article. While it might be nice to have individual statements footnoted, I would hardly think this counts as unreferenced. 24.155.88.186 13:53, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
