This comprehensive historical account tells the story of 200 years of financial panics in America, from 1819 to COVID-19, showing how and why so many financial crises have occurred in the United States and offering solutions to avoiding these sorts of crises moving forward.

• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: The Recipe for Panic Stew
  • 1 Handle with Care
  • 2 How the System Works—Until It Doesn’t
• Part Two: How the Government Creates Financial Crises
  • 3 The S&L Reckoning
• Part Three: The Pre-Regulation Era: A Century of Panic
  • 4 Boom, Bust, Panic, and Repeat
  • 5 The Era of Federal Regulation
  • 6 Troublous Times
• Part Four: The Regulatory Era: Even Larger Panics
  • 7 Financial Armageddon
  • 8 Down Come the Banks
  • 9 No One Washes a Rented Car
  • 10 Financial Pandemic
• Part Five: The Cure for the Common Crisis
  • 11 Building a Better Mousetrap
  • 12 Machines to the Rescue
  • 13 Attack of the Algorithms
  • 14 Days of Future Panics
  • 15 Putting Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow in Context
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index