“[T]he most striking feature of America's Gilded Age banking and financial markets is their lack of regulation. Wall Street was periodically upended by... colorful figures such as {{w|Daniel Drew}}, Jim Fiske, and Jay Gould to manipulate prices and corner markets. The only force countervailing against such panics was a handful of more responsible investors, most notably J. P. Morgan... [who] engineered a successful rescue operation after the {{w|Panic of 1907}}... That episode inspired Congress to begin... plans for a central bank. After all, Morgan couldn't live forever.”