I don’t know if anyone has seen this C-SPAN video that’s been making the rounds of the paranoiasphere.
Rep. Paul Kanjorski (almost wrote “Ron Jaworski” there…) says that on September 11, 2008 (his meeting was on 9/15; he describes the financial events as taking place on the previous Thursday–9/11), there was an “electronic run on the banks.” If the govt. had not intervened, they estimate that $5.5 trillion would have bled out of the US banking system by the end of the day, destroying our nation’s economy (and, the next day, the world’s economy). (Relevant video starts after 2 mins. in.)
Now, to me, it just sounds like he’s saying that many people started simultaneously fearing for their money market accounts and began to withdraw money on that day. Until, that is, the feds (FDIC?) stepped in and promised to insure accounts up to $250,000. That restored calm and stemmed the tide.
Now, many bloggers are reading this whole episode as “some party deliberately tried to crash the US/world economy.” Certainly the 9/11 timing doesn’t hurt their argument. But Kanjorksi’s account doesn’t sound anything like that to me. Am I reading the situation right? Please let me know if the paranoid types are right (which I doubt) or if I’ve misunderstood the financial activities undertaken by the feds, etc. (which I don’t doubt).