We thank Sriya Anbil, Matt Baron, Carlos Burga, Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Melissa Dell, Thomas Eisenbach, Carola Frydman, Claudia Goldin, Itay Goldstein, Andrew Jalil, Matt Jaremski, Sam Hanson, Todd Keister, Stephen Morris, Sarah Quincy, Jeremy Stein, Richard Thakor, and participants at the Barcelona Summer Forum, Catholic University of Chile International Conference on Finance, Chicago Booth, DC Finance Conference, ECB, Empirical Macro Discussion Group, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Frankfurt School, Georgetown University, Goethe University/SAFE, Harvard University, Harvard/MIT Financial Economics Workshop, IMF Macrofinancial Seminar, Minnesota Corporate Finance Conference, NBER Development of the American Economy (Spring 2026), NYU Financial History Workshop, Princeton University, University of Georgia, and YPFS Fighting a Financial Crisis Conference for helpful comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Matt Jaremski for sharing datasets on bank names and clearinghouse existence across time and cities. We also thank Moxie Clifford, Trang Do, and Camilla MacMichael for excellent research assistance. Emil Verner thanks the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for financial support. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the Federal Reserve System, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.