Part 2/10:
The Panic of 1907 was ignited by the ambition of a few speculators who sought to corner the market on United Copper stocks. Their misguided attempts to inflate stock prices revealed the underlying weaknesses of an already fragile financial landscape. As they attempted to "squeeze the shorts," their failure fed into a broader panic—brokerages halted operations on the New York Stock Exchange, bank runs spread throughout the nation, and innumerable savings were wiped out globally in an environment where financial protections, like the FDIC, were nonexistent.