This paper identifies how bank branching benefited local economies during the Great Depression. Using archival data and narrative evidence, I show how Bank of America's branch network in 1930s California created an internal capital market to diversify away local liquidity shortfalls, allowing it...

1: Financial Crises: a Hardy Perennial -- 2: The Anatomy of a Typical Crisis.-3: Speculative Manias -- 4: Fueling the Flames: the Expansion of Credit -- 5: The Critical Stage – When the Bubble Is About To Pop -- 6: Bernie Madoff: Frauds, Swindles, and the Credit Cycle -- 7: Domestic Contagion:...

"Manias, Panics and Crashes, is a vivid and entertaining account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. Covering such topics as the history and anatomy of crises, speculative manias, and the lender of last resort, this book has been...

Fighting financial crises: learning from the past -- The New York Clearing House Association -- The start of a panic -- What the New York Clearing House did during National Vanking Era panics -- Information production and suppression and emergency liquidity -- "Too big to fail" before the Fed --...