Thanks to Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed and Scott Loftness for linking me up with this video:
At 2 minutes 10 seconds into the video, Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a “tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars.”
According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occured over the period of an hour or two.
As the Treasury saw what happened, it pumped $105 billion into the system, but that would not stop the electronic run on the banks so they closed it all down.
If they had not, $5.5-trillion would have been withdrawn by 14:00 that day which would have caused the U.S. economy to collapse and, within 24 hours, the world economy.
Jeez … ’nuff said.
p.s. no wonder Lord Myners, the City Minister, said the UK banks were hours from going under …