(Jan 27th 2009) Rep Paul Kanjorski recalls how close the Federal Reserve came on September 18th 2008 from the whole financial system collapsing (Just 3 days after the Lehman Bros collapse)

Here is Rep Paul Kanjorski recalling in a January 27th 2009 C-SPAN interview on just how close the whole financial system came to total collapse a few months earlier (Thursday September 18th 2008) which was the depths of the 2008 crisis when on Monday September 15th 2008 Lehman Brothers had to declare bankruptcy which shook the stockmarket with complete fear & uncertainty (Bearn Stearns had collapsed just 6 months earlier in March 2008). Asked about why they agreed to the $700 billion Wallstreet bailout package, Senator Paul Kanjorski recalls the meeting they had with Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson & Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Beranke as he says ...

"Here is the facts. On Thursday (September 18th 2008) at about 11am in the morning the Federal Reserve noticed the tremendous draw downs of the MONEY MARKET accounts in the United States to the tune of $550 billion dollars being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped $105 billion dollars into the system and quickly realized they could NOT stem the tide. We were having an ELECTRONIC RUN ON THE BANKS. They decided to close the operation and close down the Money Accounts and announce a Guarantee of $250,000USD per account so there would not be further panic out there. If they had not done that, their estimation was that by 2pm that afternoon that $5.5 TRILLION DOLLARS would have been drawn out of the MONEY MARKET SYSTEM of the United States and would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States and within 24-hours the world economy would have collapsed. Now we talked of that time about what would have happened if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it".