The Economic History Podcast with Fexingo: Past Recessions, Booms, and Lessons from History

What does a buttonwood tree have to do with Wall Street? In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Panic of 1792 — a credit crisis that nearly collapsed the young US government and led directly to the Buttonwood Agreement, the document that founded the New York Stock Exchange. They walk through Alexander Hamilton's debt assumption plan, the speculative mania in bank stocks, the collapse of Willi...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the 1791-1794 Whiskey Rebellion, the first major test of federal tax authority under the U.S. Constitution. They trace how Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's excise tax on distilled spirits—designed to fund revolutionary war debt and assert federal power—triggered a violent uprising in western Pennsylvania. The hosts unpack the economics of the tax: why...

In 1860, the Pony Express charged $5 per half-ounce letter — the equivalent of $150 today. This episode of The Economic History Podcast with Fexingo examines how the Pony Express became a natural experiment in price discrimination and the economics of speed. Lucas and Luna trace how the service priced urgency across the American frontier, why its rates collapsed so quickly, and what that tells us...

In 1877, a 10% pay cut on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad sparked the first nationwide labor uprising in American history. This episode examines how the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 unfolded, the economic backdrop of the Long Depression, and the lasting consequences for labor relations, federal intervention, and corporate power. Lucas and Luna walk through the specific triggers, the spread from Bal...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Panic of 1857 — a financial crisis sparked by the collapse of a single bank, the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, that spread from Wall Street to the American heartland and across the Atlantic to London and Hamburg. They focus on two specific numbers: the $7 million in deposits that vanished overnight, and the 78 percent drop in railroad stock valu...

In 1825, a stock mania in Latin American mining shares and a speculative bubble in British joint-stock companies burst, triggering a banking crisis that nearly collapsed the entire English financial system. Lucas and Luna explore how the Bank of England, after initially tightening credit, was forced to reverse course and lend freely against sound collateral — a move that effectively invented the m...

In this episode of The Economic History Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the Quasi-War of 1797-1800—an undeclared naval conflict with France that forced the young American republic to build a standing navy from scratch. They trace how this military build-up catalyzed the rise of domestic shipbuilding, iron forging, and insurance industries, turning a security crisis into an economic launchpad. Spec...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the 1973 oil embargo and its lasting economic impact. They focus on the specific trigger: the Yom Kippur War and OPEC's subsequent cut in production, which caused oil prices to quadruple within months. The hosts trace how this shock led to the term 'stagflation' — a combination of high inflation and stagnant growth that defied the prevailing Phillips Curve m...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the Panic of 1837, a depression triggered by Andrew Jackson's Specie Circular, which required land payments in gold or silver. They trace how the collapse of cotton prices, British credit tightening, and the failure of state-chartered 'wildcat' banks led to a six-year contraction. The episode drills into the specific mechanism: Jackson's destruction of the S...

When the Nasdaq peaked at 5048 in March 2000 and then cratered nearly 80 percent by October 2002, plenty of pundits declared venture capital dead. But a small subset of firms — Benchmark, Sequoia, and a handful of others — survived and even thrived through the wreckage. This episode unpacks how they did it: cash preservation, portfolio triage, and a contrarian willingness to invest through the dow...

In 1896, William Jennings Bryan delivered one of the most famous political speeches in American history: the 'Cross of Gold' speech. But beyond the rhetoric, his campaign represented a profound economic debate between gold and silver standards that pitted farmers and debtors against Eastern banks and industrialists. This episode of The Economic History Podcast breaks down the economics behind bime...

In April 1962, U.S. Steel announced a 3.5% price increase, breaking a tacit anti-inflation agreement with President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's furious response — jawboning, FBI investigations, and a reference to his father's supposed betrayal — forced a rapid rollback but triggered the worst stock market crash since 1929. This episode unpacks how a single industry decision collided with macroecono...

In this episode of The Economic History Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into the German hyperinflation of 1923—a thermodynamic collapse of a currency that destroyed middle-class savings, rewired German politics, and forced the world to rethink central banking. They focus on a single startling number: the exchange rate of the mark against the US dollar went from 4.2 marks in 1914 to 4.2 trillion marks...

Lucas and Luna explore the economic impact of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 garment workers in New York City. They examine how the tragedy reshaped labor markets, ignited the modern workers' compensation system, and drove regulatory changes that economists still study as a case of 'safety regulation as productivity'—where stricter rules actually boosted long-term effi...

Most of us think we know the story of 1630s Dutch tulip mania — speculators paying a year's salary for a single bulb, then a sudden crash that ruined an entire economy. Episode 15 of The Economic History Podcast digs into what actually happened. Lucas and Luna walk through the real numbers: how many people were involved (very few), how much money was at stake (far less than the VOC or Dutch real e...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna dive into the 1772 credit crisis—a financial panic that began in London and spread across Europe, forcing the closure of the Ayr Bank in Scotland and shaking the British Empire. They explore how Alexander Fordyce's speculative bets and a web of interconnected bills of exchange created a systemic collapse eerily similar to modern banking runs. Lucas breaks down the m...

Episode 13 of The Economic History Podcast with Fexingo dives into the Panic of 1819 — America's first major financial crisis. Lucas and Luna explore how a post-war boom, reckless land speculation, and a sudden contraction by the Second Bank of the United States triggered a depression that lasted six years. They discuss the parallels to modern boom-bust cycles, including the 2008 housing crash, an...

Lucas and Luna revisit the Panic of 1907, a banking crisis that nearly collapsed the U.S. financial system and directly led to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. They zero in on the specific trigger: a failed attempt to corner the copper market by a speculator named F. Augustus Heinze. When Heinze's scheme unraveled, it brought down a chain of banks and trust companies, sparking a nation...

In 1922, Austria's post-WWI government printed money so aggressively that prices doubled every two weeks. Lucas and Luna unpack the mechanics of the crown's collapse—how a desperate central bank, reparations demands, and political paralysis created one of history's most extreme hyperinflations. They trace the chain from currency depreciation to social breakdown, and ask why the crisis ended so abr...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore President Nixon's dramatic August 15, 1971 decision to suspend the dollar's convertibility into gold, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system. They walk through the immediate economic shock—the 90-day wage-price freeze, the 10 percent import surcharge, and the global market chaos that followed. The hosts unpack why Nixon took this step: rising inflation,...

Most people remember the 1973 oil embargo, but the 1979 oil shock was arguably more disruptive — and the policy response tells us a lot about how central banks learned to handle supply-driven inflation. Lucas and Luna drill into the second oil crisis: the Iranian Revolution that cut global supply, the panic buying that sent crude from $13 to $40 per barrel in 18 months, and Paul Volcker's brutal c...

Episode 8 of The Economic History Podcast revisits Britain's 1815 Corn Laws — not as a dusty tariff story, but as a case study in how import restrictions designed to protect one industry can cascade into urban hunger, political crisis, and the intellectual case for free trade. Lucas walks through the specific mechanics: the sliding scale that kept grain prices artificially high, the 1819 Peterloo...

Lucas and Luna revisit the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, a meltdown that began in Thailand when the central bank ran out of foreign reserves defending the baht. They focus on one specific number: the Bank of Thailand burned through $32 billion in reserves in a single day before letting the currency float on July 2, 1997. The episode traces the contagion to Indonesia, South Korea, and Malaysia, expl...

On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6% in a single day — still the largest one-day percentage drop in history. Conventional wisdom says a stock market crash of that magnitude should trigger a recession. But it didn't. The U.S. economy kept growing through 1988 and 1989. This episode digs into why. We explore the mechanics of portfolio insurance, the role of the Federal Re...

Lucas and Luna revisit the Panic of 1792, the first financial crisis in U.S. history—a speculative bubble in bank stocks and government debt that nearly derailed the young republic. They explore Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's audacious response: open-market purchases to stabilize markets, a tactic that predates modern central banking by 120 years. The episode contrasts Hamilton's hands-on...