Black Friday - Gould and Fisk Gold Corner Attempt Triggers Financial Panic

On September 24, 1869—Black Friday—Jay Gould and James Fisk’s conspiracy to corner the gold market collapsed when the U.S. Treasury released $4 million in gold reserves, crashing the price from $163.50 to $133 per $100 in gold specie and triggering a financial panic that ruined hundreds of investors and businesses. Beginning in August 1869, Gould and Fisk had conspired to illegally corner the gold market by buying massive quantities of gold while attempting to prevent the U.S. government from selling its gold reserves, which would have increased supply and lowered prices. Gould recruited Abel Corbin, President Ulysses S. Grant’s brother-in-law, to influence the president and his Treasury Secretary to withhold government gold sales. Gould and Fisk used their connections to Grant’s administration, combined with systematic gold purchases, to drive up prices while betting that the government would not intervene. When Grant finally ordered the Treasury to sell gold on September 24, the price collapsed instantly. Gould, who had advance knowledge of the government’s impending intervention, secretly sold his gold holdings before the crash, profiting enormously while his partner Fisk and hundreds of other investors faced catastrophic losses. The panic destroyed many businesses and investors who had been caught in the price collapse. Public outrage over the manipulation led to congressional investigations, though Gould faced no criminal prosecution and kept his profits. Black Friday demonstrated the vulnerability of financial markets to manipulation by powerful speculators with political connections—a pattern where wealthy individuals use inside information from government officials to profit from market manipulation while facing no legal consequences. This established the template for modern insider trading, political corruption enabling financial crime, and the systematic failure to prosecute elite financial manipulation that characterizes contemporary kleptocracy, where billionaires profit from advance knowledge of government policy while retail investors and the broader economy absorb the losses.