Everyone remembers that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke went into a closed session in Congress in mid-September of 2008 and scared the crap out of the assembled politicians. According to a (very rough) transcript of Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) on C-Span, here is what Paulson and Bernanke said:
It was about September 15th . ? On Thursday at about 11 o?clock in the morning the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of, uh, money market accounts in the United States to the tune of $550-billion was being drawn out in in a matter of an hour or two.
The Treasury opened up its window to help, and pumped in $105-billion into the system, and quickly realized it could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close down the operation, to close down the money accounts. ? If they had not done that, in their estimation, by 2 PM that afternoon $5.5-trillion would have been withdrawn and would have collapsed the U.S. economy and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.
We talked at that time about what would have happened. It would have been the end of our economic and our political system as we know it.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ca2_1234032281
It was about September 15th . ? On Thursday at about 11 o?clock in the morning the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of, uh, money market accounts in the United States to the tune of $550-billion was being drawn out in in a matter of an hour or two.
The Treasury opened up its window to help, and pumped in $105-billion into the system, and quickly realized it could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close down the operation, to close down the money accounts. ? If they had not done that, in their estimation, by 2 PM that afternoon $5.5-trillion would have been withdrawn and would have collapsed the U.S. economy and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.
We talked at that time about what would have happened. It would have been the end of our economic and our political system as we know it.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ca2_1234032281
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