Which financier helped organize a private rescue during the Panic of 1907?

J. P. Morgan helped organize a private rescue during the Panic of 1907.

When the crisis intensified in October 1907, the United States had no central bank capable of quickly supplying emergency liquidity. Morgan, New York’s most powerful banker, gathered bank and trust-company leaders at his Manhattan library and coordinated loans, asset sales, and deposits to keep solvent institutions open.

Morgan did not rescue every troubled institution. After examining the Knickerbocker Trust Company’s books, he judged it insolvent and declined to save it. He instead concentrated on institutions such as the Trust Company of America and Lincoln Trust, while also helping arrange the purchase of the struggling Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company by U.S. Steel.

The episode made Morgan appear to be a private lender of last resort, but it also exposed the danger of depending on one financier. The crisis helped build support for the Federal Reserve System, created in 1913.