By Richard Vague

Metropolitan Museum of Art

As the first president of the Bank of the United States( BUS), Thomas Willing presided over a fledgling but rapidly ascending American financial services industry in 1791. But the launch of the BUS— because of its sheer size— overwhelmed the nascent US economy.

There had been a credit-fueled boom and bust earlier that year, even before the launch of the BUS, in a stock-buying frenzy that had come with the initial offering of BUS stock and came to be known as“ scrippomania.” But with its actual opening and its considerable lending capacity, there would soon enough be another. And it was not just the BUS but also the continued chartering of ever more banks that was increasing the credit available to investors and speculators and bringing yet more booms and busts— in bank stocks, government bonds, land, canals and roads.

The country would follow this pattern from that point forward— fits of mania punctuated by collapse, all during a period of spectacular growth that would see the size of the US economy nearly triple from $ 287 million to almost $ 789 million in GDP in the 20 years the BUS would operate. These manic, credit-fueled bursts would bring euphoria— and then calamity— since the bankers would all too often lend more than appropriate in the throes of that euphoria.

But in 1792, America had not yet learned that lesson. Indeed, it would never truly learn it, as evidenced by the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Willing, though, with a temperamental and practical prudence born of some 40 years in the tumultuous merchant trading business and 10

Portrait of Thomas Willing, the first president of the Bank of the United States, by Charles Willson Peale, 1782.

20 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Winter 2026 | www. MoAF. org