Two Idiots, One Crash The Wild Tale of Greed, Ego, and the Panic That Reshaped Wall Street

Two reckless speculators. One catastrophic week. The accidental birth of modern banking. In October 1907, F. Augustus Heinze and Charles W. Morse nearly destroyed the American economy and inadvertently created the Federal Reserve.

In October 1907, two men nearly destroyed American capitalism through sheer arrogance and stupidity. F. Augustus Heinze thought he could corner the copper market. Charles W. Morse thought he could loot banks forever. They were both catastrophically wrong. What followed was three weeks of financial hell: bank runs, a stock market collapse, and J.P. Morgan playing central bank from his private library. The panic devastated ordinary Americans who'd done nothing wrong. But the disaster forced America to finally do what it should have done decades earlier: build a financial system that couldn't be destroyed by two idiots. The Federal Reserve, deposit insurance, securities regulation all emerged from the rubble Heinze and Morse created. This is the untold story of how spectacular failure built modern finance.