No, it has nothing to do with discounts or sales on Amazon. The term "Black Friday” was born to indicate an episode of financial speculation that took place exactly 150 years ago: the 24 September 1869.
The story is incredible and is connected to two of the most unscrupulous Wall Street speculators of the time – Jay Gould and James Fisk – which brought down gold prices with a scam in which the American president was also involved Ulysses Grant.
The plan was simple: since the gold dollars in circulation after the Civil War were relatively cheap, large quantities could be purchased for manipulate the market, driving up the price to then resell everything and pocket a gigantic capital gain.
The only obstacle was Grant himself, who could order the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold and keep the price down. The two speculators then approached Abel Rathbone Corbin, a former Washington bureaucrat and brother-in-law of the President, who agreed to cooperate.
Operations began with 1,5 million in gold purchased in Corbin's own name, who then in turn recruited a certain Daniel Butterfield, helping it become number one in the US Treasury. In his new guise, Butterfield was able to give Gould, Fisk, and Corbin under the table the dates when the government would sell gold. For this service he collected one and a half million from the three.
After that, Corbin organized a series of meetings attended by Gould, Fisk and Grant. On these occasions, the two financiers tried to convince the President to drive up the price of gold, because by doing so it would have devalued the dollar and boosted exports, favoring agriculture.
Overcoming the initial mistrust, Grant was convinced and stopped the gold sales, anticipating the news to Corbin. At that point, the three conspirators bought all the yellow metal they could using an army of figureheads. And it was obviously a big deal, because the shares went up 20%. But the boom was short-lived.
On the evening of September 23, Grant notified Boutwell of his decision to sell $4 million in gold, and the head of the Treasury, of course, notified Gould.
A day later, Friday, September 24, the Treasury (and Gould's) sales unleashed the panic selling e gold prices plummeted 18% in one hour, falling from 162.5 to 133 dollars an ounce, while the stock market lost more than 20%. It was the first real “Black Friday”.
Despite everything, Gould and Fisk came clean, even managing to pocket the gains, while Corbin lost big and Butterfield was removed from his position.
