What Happened Last Fall To Our Banking System
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Business, Economy, Money, VideoFor those of you who would have done nothing, listen to the reality…
Partial transcript…
I was there when the secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked to members of Congress about what was going on… Here’s the facts. We don’t even talk about these things.On Thursday, at about 11 o’clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two.
The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion 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 $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be further panic and there. And that’s what actually happened.
If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o’clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion 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 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.
For those of you who didn’t realize how dire the situation was (even though I implored you to take it seriously) I hope this video will make it crystal. If our banking system failed and it set off a chain reaction around the world, our credibility would have been TOAST. Because at that point, the worldwide sentiment would have turned against us once and for all and foreign politicians would have been forced to rebuke us. So do you think the dollar would have been the preferred currency after that? Do you think we would have had any leverage if we had absolutely wiped out the world’s wealth in one fell swoop because we didn’t act?
Letting the market work would have literally resulted in almost a complete unravelling of our way of life. Imagine if you had woken up the next day and discovered that your debit card, your credit cards…none of them worked. It would have been catastrophic.
Paulson’s plan was merely a stopgap and it was a poorly executed one as it ended up trying to recapitalize banks in a fairly ineffective way. True, credit did unfreeze, but only for those at the top. But now we have a new administration that’s proposed a plan which focuses not only on banks, but also businesses and consumers. I don’t know if it’ll work, but if we don’t attempt to get the credit flowing to the folks at the bottom again, it’ll be impossible to pull ourselves out of this mess.
And, again, doing nothing is not an option.
(h/t: Balloon Juice)
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 and is filed under Business, Economy, Money, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Your back-patting rant speaks specifically to one particular policy move, the guarantee of money market accounts against a run on them by worried account holders. That made a ton of sense.
I don’t recall anyone saying that was a bad move. Anyone who has seen It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart gets this.
This policy move on money market accounts simply does not speak AT ALL to the issue of how large the current stimulus bill ought to be, or what things ought to and ought not to be included. I repeat: NOT AT ALL.
You argument lacks any logical coherence. One obvious and sensible policy component among many things quickly undertaken during the past crisis was indeed wise. But this action does not show that current proposed actions are equally wise, or even wise at all.
I am fine with the simple contention that congress and our President ought to act with all deliberate speed. That means that they should move as quickly as they can without letting speed overwhelm the need for judgement. This really ought to be a trivial insight, Justin. The only judgement you seem capable of making is that you are scared witless. That makes you a lousy captain. Scared? OK. Scared witless? Not ok.
You’re singing the female vocal lead in “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”: “I gotta know right now, do you love me, will you love me forever….”
That casts future generations in the role of praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive. Becuase that’s roundabout when we’ll pay off our debt.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
[...] says one congressman, via Donklephant: I was there when the secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked [...]
February 10th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Kranky,
Hard to knock a guy who works in a Meatloaf reference like that…
Well, what is it gonna be? You can either let the free market work, or not.
While no one is knocking the Feds move in September NOW, there were indeed people bashing it THEN. Let the free market work! They yelled.
You are seeing it now in hindsight and not seeing things as they were then–I cannot say you were critical then, but there were a lot of people.
Now, there are a lot of people critical of TARP NOW, (me too) but there were very few critical then. Obviously, a lot of what we’ve seen done with TARP funds is something we can be critical of, but even I who was critical of it from the beginning cannot say with certainty that passing it was the wrong thing to do–it congress had not approved it and Bush signed it, the end result might have been far worse.
And now we have the Stimulus Bill–here’s the only package that people have actually spent some time working and people are bashing it based on a relatively small portion of programs deemed as unneeded (meanwhile, the Senate compromise stripped out a lot of things I think were important).
We’ve got the GOP wind machine trying to whip people into a frenzy, we’ve got free marketeers saying let the market work (never mind there is no free market except in the minds of free marketeers), we’ve got executives laying people off all over the place, and we’ve got the markets in a tizzy with all the uncertainty.
Granted, I am in favor of the stimulus plan–even those things that people are trying to argue are not stimulus, but all I can think of when I hear people saying let’s not do anything is, “Nero played while Rome burned…..didn’t he?”
February 11th, 2009 at 6:01 am
[...] And to that point, I hope you realize that gauging “Wall Street’s reaction” to Geithner’s plan is the height of cluelessness (yes, I’m talking to you Matt Drudge) given that, well…you know…Wall Street nearly caused a complete worldwide financial meltdown. [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Gerry, I just don’t see it as either or, do or don’t. The current dynamic is the one under which the current bill gets IMproved before it gets A-proved.
I know there are SOME folks who have said and are saying we ought not to do anything. I’m not one of them, and I don’t think this contingent is the majority.
At the end of all this, a bill will get passed, and it will primarily reflect the approach of democrats, which is understandable, and maybe even acceptable if the alternative is to watch the ship sink. That doesn’t mean it won’t be regrettable in many aspects, including aspects which could have been avoided with a little more focus, a little more common sense, and a little bit less haste.
I continue to believe that much of what is in this bill does a very poor job of altering current conditions to foster new growth. For example, if a new government program grants 2 billion dollars to encourage lets say high speed rail, after the 2 billion is spent, have conditions progressed to the point where something happens that doesn’t involve the government poring even more money into the effort?stopping small
Contrast that with the 15k tax credit for qualified home purchasers, which I believe is currently in the bill. That’s going to improve the RE market by reducing the stock of homes held by banks and increase the number of people with sound mortgages of houses they bought at a price that reflects current valuation.
As regards TARP, I think it’s a mistake to do as you do in conflating the guarantee of money market accounts with the rushed bill as a whole. Like I said before, I don’t recall anyone saying the money market guarantee was a mistake. It stopped the run on funds. It may not have even cost us anything, or anything much. Once the run stopped, values stabilized. Handing out giant piles of money to struggling banks who now can’t account for that money is a horse of another color entirely.
February 13th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
[...] recent days some misinformation was widely circulated on the ‘tubes, (including this blog) regarding the circumstances of the banking system crisis last fall. The information in question is [...]