Business Books: Lessons for today's market in 1907 panic

Canada.com - Hamilton, Ontario, Canada - The current upheaval in global markets has many on Wall Street drawing comparisons to turmoil seen in 1998, 1987 and even 1929, but a new book suggests investors should look back as far as 1907 for insight into the mechanisms that can trigger a crash.

"The Panic of 1907" (Wiley, $29.95) begins with the Park Avenue suicide of Charles Barney, a prominent New York banker. Barney was one of many casualties -- both individual and institutional -- of an attempt to corner the market in shares of United Copper Co., which brought a string of banks to the brink of collapse.

Authors Robert Bruner and Sean Carr illustrate the domino-effect of the panic, from the plunge in United Copper shares all the way to the bankruptcy threat for the city of New York. "The Panic of 1907" also paints a picture of the many conditions that made the economy vulnerable to such a brutal chain reaction.