"On Thursday, at about eleven o’clock in the morning the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of ah, ah, ah, money market accounts in the United States to the tune of five hundred and fifty billion dollars, was being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its ah, ah, window to help, they pumped one hundred and five billion dollars into 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 two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per account so that there wouldn’t be further panic out there, and that’s what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o’clock that afternoon five and a half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States and within twenty four hours the world economy would have collapsed.

"Now we talked at that time about what would happen if that would happen. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it and that’s why, when they made that point we’ve got to act and do things quickly we did."

"Noah, How Long Can You Tread Water? - First Things.