Blog


A History of Financial Panics in the U.S.

From the merchant William Duer’s attempts to speculate on post–Revolutionary War debt, to an ill-conceived 1815 plan to sell English coats to Americans on credit, to the debt-fueled railroad expansion that precipitated the Panic of 1857, A Nation of Deadbeats (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), by Scott Reynolds Nelson, offers a crash course in the history of financial panics in the U.S. — and a concise explanation of the first principles that caused them all. The following excerpt comes from the preface, “A Republic of Deadbeats.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

via A History of Financial Panics in the U.S. – Utne Reader.