Talk:Panic of 1907
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I deleted "relatively" from the first sentence of the article -- as in "the panic was a relatively serious economic downturn." It struck me as an unsupported subjective viewpoint, and also seemed to contradict information later in the article. (E.g., "the severity was such that Congress was moved to form the Federal Reserve Bank" -- I am paraphrasing here.) It's possible that this panic really was only "relatively" serious when compared to others, but I think it would be better to provide some real indication of the scope, rather than use a vague modifier like "relatively". For instance, X number of banks were forced to close, etc.
There are also two instances of "Panic" being capitalized where perhaps it shouldn't be. (One at the end of the first paragraph -- "the fourth Panic in 34 years" -- and another in the second paragraph where the event is referred to merely as "the Panic.") I was going to change both to lowercase, but there have already been edits on the case of those words so I let them be.
Finally, I wonder about the last sentence in the first paragraph (i.e., "the fourth Panic in 34 years"). The argument for inclusion is probably that it provides context -- this wasn't just one isolated panic. But the numbers used are odd. Why 34 years? Why the last four panics? Was the period before ~1870 especially quiet? Did Congress refer especially to these four panics when ordering the creation of the Federal Reserve? Would it suffice to say, "The Panic of 1907 was just one in a series of panics that swept Wall Street in the years following --some event-- or leading up to --some event--"? I don't know enough about this topic to make the edit myself, but that is a question I have as a reader. --Mbennardo 15:20, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
I added another sentence to the end of the article about the creation of Federal Reserve Bank in response to the Panic of 1907. I think this closes the loop on the effect of the panic... The Fed was mentioned in the first paragraph, but never again. Perhaps this addition is outside the scope of the article, but since the article on the Federal Reserve Act mentions the Panic of 1907, it seemed to make sense to reciprocate.
--Mbennardo 15:35, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
