of a scheme created by William Duer, Alexander Macomb and other bankers in the winter of 1791. Duer and Macomb's plan was to use large loans to gain control of the US debt securities market because other investors needed those securities to make payments on stocks in the Bank of the United States. Additionally, Duer and Macomb were able to create their own credit by endorsing one another's notes, and did so in hopes of creating a new bank in New York to overtake the existing Bank of New York. On March 9, 1792 Duer stopped making payments to his creditors and simultaneously faced a lawsuit for actions he had taken as Secretary of the Treasury Board in the 1780s. As Duer and Macomb defaulted on their contracts and found themselves in prison, the price of securities fell more than 20%, all in a matter of weeks. The Panic of 1792 was further instigated by the sudden restriction of previously overextended credit by the Bank of the United States. When the Bank of the United States first began accepting deposits and making discounts in December 1791, it expanded credit extensively. By January 31, 1792, monetary liabilities exceeded $2.17 million, and discounts reached $2.68 million – a very large sum at the time. Speculators took advantage of this new credit source, using it to make withdrawals from the Bank of New York, which placed undue stress on the bank's reserves. From December 29 to March 9, cash reserves for the Bank of the United States decreased by 34%, prompting the bank to not renew nearly 25% of its outstanding 30-day loans. This forced many Bank of the United States borrowers to sell other securities they owned to satisfy the un-renewed loans, which caused prices for these other investments to fall sharply, aggravating the financial panic of 1792. Crisis management In mid-March 1792, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton began the political and economic maneuvering necessary to contain the credit crisis affecting markets across the country. The charter creating the Bank of the United States had also set up the Sinking Fund Commission composed of Vice President John Adams, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Attorney General Edmund Randolph, Chief Justice John Jay, and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, charged with resolving financial crises. On March 21, 1792, with Jay absent from voting, the commission split on the decision to allow open-market purchases. Having