“JS gave all of his assets to try to save others financially.”
And where pray tell did he get those assets? An inheritance? The vast acres of land he owned? Oh wait, he got it from his followers! From the history of Ebenezer Robinson, Smith needed the bank scam to pay off an earlier failed mercantile scam (and Ebenezer was a stalwart Mormon saying this, the printer of the third edition of the BOM!). Also, an attempt to find treasure hidden in a house had come a cropper.
“The Kirtland bank failure was part of a general banking failure all over the country in the panic of 1837.”
Except the Kirtland bank never was backed with sufficient assets. It’s like saying Enron wouldn’t have failed if only there had never been an energy crisis.