Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was able to deftly manage the crisis by providing banks across the Northeast United States with hundreds of thousands of dollars to make open-market purchases of securities, which allowed the market to stabilize by May 1792.
[2] Demand for stock in the newly formed Bank of the United States was significant, and prices for scrips increased dramatically for the first several weeks, reaching $280 in New York and reportedly over $300 in Philadelphia by mid-August.
[1] In late December 1791, the price of securities began to increase once again, and the eventual crash in March 1792 caused many investors to panic and withdraw their money from the Bank of the United States.
[4] 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.
[4] While still waiting for Jay's formal and deciding vote, Randolph began to side with Hamilton on March 26, and with only Jefferson dissenting, the commission authorized $100,000 in open-market purchases of securities.
By exerting his power as Secretary of Treasury and persuading a number of banks to continue offering credit throughout the crisis, Hamilton was able to limit the amount of Federal debt purchases by the Sinking Fund Commission to $243,000 – roughly $100,000 less than what was spent during the smaller panic in 1791.
[4][5] This prescription, that in a crisis central banks should "lend freely, against good collateral, at a penalty rate" is still considered the gold standard for managing a financial panic as the "lender of last resort".