This chapter assesses the potential of technological tools to ensure voluntary compliance without coercion and improve the predictability of trustworthiness, focusing on the ethical challenges such differentiation might create.

Chapter 1 introduces the challenges of trusting public cooperation without monitoring and coercion, considers current research on the relationship between concepts such as cooperation and honesty, and examines the effectiveness of voluntary compliance.

This chapter investigates factors influencing voluntary compliance with environmental regulations, exploring the role of environmental motivation in shaping behavior and analyzing various types of pro-environmental actions.

With Congress unwilling to authorize another public loan, the proceeds of which would be intended to buy much needed gold for the Treasury, Cleveland and Carlisle cast about for other ways to secure financing. Morgan would eventually create three additional transactions to stave off populist attempts to pursue a full-fledged bimetallic currency regime: one would be accepted, one would be rejected, and one would be executed without government request, approval, or oversight.

This chapter investigates moderating factors such as trust-related mechanisms, norms, and institutions, and their ability to explain the relationship between intrinsic motivation and compliance, which is free of regulatory coercion.

Farmers sought relief from the 1893 recession by lobbying for an increase in the money supply from newly mined silver. Railroads sought relief by reorganizing their debt, through extended maturities and combinations of smaller roads with larger ones. The specter of bimetallism in the US added to the financial uncertainty following the Panic of 1893 for European investors who became increasingly worried that US debtors would pay them with silver instead of gold. A slow-motion run on the US Treasury’s gold began and then gained steam. Morgan’s own business was not insulated from the turmoil surrounding the Treasury’s gold reserves.

We find it plausible that Morgan’s recurring ability to include subject matter experts in routine syndicates could have been applied to the task of coordinating lender of last resort facilities. This provides at least one plausible explanation for how he developed the skills to act as lender of last resort in the American setting that did not include a central bank.

Morgan’s legacy was twofold: his development of processes for handling crises and his recruitment of people during crises who would live on long after he died to influence the practice of last resort lending specifically and central banking more generally.

Morgan became adept at learning how to corral the numerous small pools of bank reserves dispersed across the US in banks, the Treasury, and abroad. To help us understand his journey, this chapter serves as a user’s guide to the banking and financial institutions and legislated structures that confronted J. P. Morgan. It provides a reference for subsequent chapters.

The commonality among these three interventions centered on Morgan’s ability to harness financial capacity to smooth over disturbances that did not threaten the entire financial system.