[Jim W N]

The concept of Adam Smith’s free market economy being a relatively new concept, I wonder if there was or is a non-Leftist, knowledgeable analysis the cause of the “panic” and how it took its course.

For example, Milton Friedman has pretty irrefutably shown that while the stock market crash of 1929 was a serious but inherently short-lived cyclical economic lurch, the Great Depression was solely the cause of government as the FED responded by repeatedly tightening money causing massive bank failures.

It would appear that thankfully the federal government wasn’t able to screw things up too badly in 1857.

[abb]

FR’s Larry Schweikart and co-author Charles W. Calomiris did a paper in 1991 on the Panic. It’s on JSTOR, so I can’t get to the full article.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2123394?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[abb]

This looks like a reasonable article.

http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2015/10/crisis-chronicles-defensive-suspension-and-the-panic-of-1857.html