The 1907 U.S. financial panic was called the Panic of 1907.
The crisis began after a failed attempt to corner the stock of United Copper Company triggered a run on banks connected to the speculators. Trust companies, which operated alongside banks but faced less regulation, came under particular pressure. Depositors demanded cash, credit tightened, and stock prices fell sharply.
Industrialist and financier J. P. Morgan helped stabilize the system by organizing emergency lending and persuading other financiers to provide support. His private intervention highlighted how little formal central-bank machinery the United States had for containing a nationwide financial panic.
The panic helped build political support for monetary reform. Congress created the National Monetary Commission, whose work influenced the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. The event is sometimes confused with the Panic of 1893, another major nineteenth-century U.S. crisis, but the 1907 panic was the immediate background to the creation of the Federal Reserve.