LiveLeaking the (Almost) End of the World

Liveleak.com is a YouTube-ish service that specializes in shocking and/or prurient videos that "cannot be shown" elsewhere for the sake of the children.

Well you don't need to be a kid to be scared shitless by this video from C-SPAN on September 18th, 2008, where we learn from Rep. Kanjorski that so mny people were taking money our of MONEY-MARKET accounts on that afternoon that the banking system almost collapsed.

At 2 minutes and 20 seconds into this video, Kanjorski claims:

"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."

Yikes.