[Infowarrior] - How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM

[Richard Forno]

How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM On September 18
Posted by Tyler Durden at 12:56 PM
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-world-almost-came-to-end-at-2pm-on.html

LiveLeak has caught a scary moment of previously undisclosed insight
by Paul Kanjorski where he reveals some facts that have not been
captured by the media previously. At 2 minutes and 20 seconds in the
video below, Democratic Representative Kanjorski 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
occurred over the period of an hour or two. And it gets worse.
Kanjorski paraphrases the following disclosure by Bernanke and
Paulson:

    On Thursday (Sept 18), at 11am the Federal Reserve noticed a
tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the U.S., to the tune
of $550 billion was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two.
The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped a $105 billion in
the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We
were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the
operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of
$250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there.

    If they had not done that, their estimation is that by 2pm that
afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market
system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the
U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. It
would have been the end of our economic system and our political
system as we know it.

    We are no better off today than we were 3 months ago because we
have a decrease in the equity positions of banks because other assets
are going sour by the moment.

Interestingly, Kanjorski, and likely more and more Democrats, are
starting to shift to the camp that more time is needed to make a
correct decision this time (which may explain Geithner's decision to
postpone the "bank-rescue" announcement by one day to Tuesday),
instead of rushing into another half-baked plan. Very scary stuff.

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-world-almost-came-to-end-at-2pm-on.html