J.P. Morgan — Banking, Consolidation, Lender of Last Resort

**John Pierpont Morgan** was the most powerful private citizen in American history — a banker whose personal judgment, balance sheet, and Rolodex were, for three decades, more consequential than the Federal Reserve (which didn't exist yet) or the U.S. Treasury. Born in 1837 into a prominent banking family (his father Junius was a partner at George Peabody & Co. in London), Morgan was groomed from birth for finance, educated in Boston, Switzerland, and Göttingen, and entered banking as a young man already connected to the most important financial networks in America and Europe.