200 Years of American Financial Panics

This comprehensive historical account tells the story of 200 years of financial panics in America, from 1819 to COVID-19, showing how and why so many financial crises have occurred in the United States and offering solutions to avoiding these sorts of crises moving forward. 

Thomas P. Vartanian has been involved in US financial services since 1976. Throughout his career, he has represented parties in 30 of the 50 largest bank and S&L failures in the country. He served in the Reagan administration as General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation during the S&L Crisis, and before that as Special Assistant to the chief counsel at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the Carter administration. He was the Chair of the American Bar Association’s Cyberspace Law Committee between 1998 and 2002. Between 1983 and 2018, Vartanian chaired the financial institution’s practices at the international law firms of Dechert LLP and Fried Frank LLP.  After retiring from the practice of law, he became the Executive Director of the Program on Financial Regulation and Technology at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School, where he was also a Professor of Law. He has been an adjunct professor teaching banking and financial technology law at Georgetown, George Washington, and Boston University law schools and has guest-lectured at Harvard Law School. His articles have appeared in numerous publications around the world, including the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The Washington Times, and American Banker.