The House of Morgan: an American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernov

Morgan, along with Carnegie and Rockefeller, worked to make the American economy organized and systematic. In fact, Morgan effectively bailed out the American financial system two times. At one point, the U.S. Treasury seemed on the brink of failure as it “didn’t have enough gold in reserve to meet its bills” (27). J.P. Morgan provided the nation with $62 million, saving the American economy. Later on, the nation faced a financial problem, so destructive that it could have led to a depression. The situation was so horrific that a trust company nearly collapsed, which would have promoted widespread panic. Morgan convinced several of the nation’s foremost financers to lend money in an effort to save the trust, in turn saving the country from a financial catastrophe. Morgan is also infamously known for creating successful companies from failing

One of the most famous features on the landscape of the banking crisis in 1980s was the crisis involving the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in May 1984, which still is one of the largest bank failures in U.S. banking history. The collapse of CINB was a significant event in banking history that had a moral for both bank risk managers and regulators. It showed how quickly the exposure of credit problems at a well regarded bank could turn into a liquidity problem that danger not only the survival of the bank but also the financial system in the US.

The panic of 1907 and the Great Recession of 2007-2009 has both been major economic events in the United States economic history. This paper compares and contrasts these two major events and enables us to understand importance of certain financial institutions and regulations during troubled times in the financial sector. In this paper, both panics of 1907 and 2007 are historically analyzed and compared.

On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which is commonly referred as the Dodd-Frank Act. This act was passed as a response to the Great Recession in order to prevent potential financial debacle in the future. This regulation has a significant impact on American financial services industry by placing major changes on the financial regulation and agencies since the Great Depression. This paper examines the history and impact of Dodd-Frank Act on American financial services industry.

Some background: In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression, Congress was concerned that commercial banking operations and the payments system were incurring

Before Congress created the Federal Reserve System, periodic financial panics had plagued the nation. These panics had contributed to many bank failures, business bankruptcies, and general economic downturns. A severe crisis in 1907 prompted

After the banking crisis of the 1930s, many people wondered why the Federal Reserve, also called the Fed, had not prevented crisis. After all, helping banks in times of a crisis was one of the primary reasons the Federal Reserve was created. The Federal Reserve was created because of events such as the panic of 1907. The panic of 1907 was very similar to the stock-market crash of 1929. During the summer of 1907, the economy started to go into downturn as many companies went bankrupt. These bankruptcies caused stock market prices to nosedive. These price drops then caused many Americans to withdraw their money from banks, causing many banks to begin failing. In hopes of keeping banks from failing, the U.S. Treasury began giving millions of

In doing so, Bruner and Carr are better able to elucidate the ways in which individual actors caused the rapid decline of the American economy in late 1906. In this, Bruner and Carr begin the text by highlighting the influences and magnitude of the major players in the financial services sector in the early twentieth century. Perhaps the most notable of the those mentioned is that of J. Pierpont Morgan, the Wall Street Oligarch for which the contemporarily “too big to fail” financial services entity J.P Morgan-Chase is named. In highlighting these individuals and their over-inflated influence on the financial system, Bruner and Carr subtlety highlight one of the biggest problems facing the financial services sector during this time period—the lack of regulation. To further elucidate this point, the books opening chapter follows the interactions between J.P Morgan and his other colleagues in George F. Baker, president of the First National Bank of New York and James Stillman, president of New York’s National City Bank. Here, the text focuses on the ways in which they inconspicuously competed and colluded with each other to make their fortunes larger and more

The federal government reacted to the financial crisis that emerged in 2007 and affected industries in many ways. This crisis caused an economic meltdown that saw a lot of people lose their jobs, homes, and savings. The Federal Reserve implemented several solutions that were designed to improve the liquid assets of the financial institutions and create favorable conditions in financial markets. These solutions resulted in changes to the Federal Reserve's financial records. The solutions were enforced so as to fulfill the Reserve’s objectives on financial policies which involve employment and price inflation.

Before the advent of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 1933 and the general conception of government safety nets, the United States banking industry was quite different than it is today. Depositors assumed substantial default risk and even the slightest changes in consumer confidence could result in complete turmoil within the banking world. In addition, bank managers had almost complete discretion over operations. However, today the financial system is among the most heavily government- regulated sectors of the U.S. economy. This drastic change in public policy resulted directly from the industry’s numerous pre-regulatory failures and major disruptions that produced severe economic and social

In the financial crisis, Bank of America not only acted as a mortgage originator, a mortgage securitizer, but also interconnected with other major important financial institutions to promote trading activities. Nevertheless, as the bank was too eager and greedy to make more profits,

As a capitalistic society, the United States banking sector has flourished ever since the chartering of its first bank, Bank of North America in 1781 (Smith). Historically, banking has brought on significant industrialization in the United States, enabling our nation to stand among the most powerful today. However, the current United States national debt is at $19.2 trillion, and every second it is increasing exponentially (“U.S. National”). How did we manage to fall into such a dark abyss of financial debt? Poor banking, continuous deregulation of the banking sector, riskier and higher leveraged investments, sub-prime mortgage loans, and fraud. These are all factors which have led our economy to collapse over and over again. In this mess

Back then people believed that money can be made over night just by investing. According to the Wall Street prep website, everyone used to look up to JP Morgan, the National City Bank, because they were the leaders of the game. JP Morgan was making a great amount of money, so great that he personally saved the country during the calamitous panic in 1907. Banks began to use their federal loans in order to push the stock market forward and make more money, and on black Tuesday of October 29 the stock market crashed which was one of the causes of the Great Depression.

During the volatile and instable period, the risk was obviously brought to a new level. Morgan’s Private Bank kept their eyes open all the time. I concluded two main aspects.

During the 1980’s the U.S. largest commercial banks became endangered by the dept. crisis of Latin