Examining the regulation of banking in the United States between 1900 and the Great Depression, Eugene Nelson White shows how Congress and the state legislatures tried to strengthen the banking system by creating new institutions, rather than by changing nineteenth-century laws that perpetuated...

When faced with a run on a "systemically important" but insolvent bank in 1889, the Banque de France pre-emptively organized a lifeboat to ensure that depositors were protected and an orderly liquidation could proceed. To protect the Banque from losses on its lifeboat loan, a guarantee syndicate...