The financial panic that began in the United States in October 1907 was the Panic of 1907.
The crisis intensified after an unsuccessful attempt to corner the stock of United Copper Company. When the scheme failed, depositors withdrew funds from institutions connected to the speculators. Runs spread to trust companies, which were less tightly regulated than commercial banks and held important financial assets.
New York financier J. P. Morgan organized private support for threatened institutions and helped persuade banks to provide emergency liquidity. The episode exposed the weakness of the US banking system, which lacked a central bank capable of acting as a lender of last resort.
The panic contributed to the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. It is sometimes described as a stock-market crash, but its defining feature was a broader banking and credit crisis. The Panic of 1893 and Panic of 1873 were separate earlier US financial emergencies.