"An electronic run on the banks"

I'm no conspiracy theorist (really), but here we have a member of the U.S. House of Representative saying that sometime around Sep 15th, 2008, some entities drew down $550B worth of money market account assets over the course of an hour or two.  Best estimations are that, unchecked, this would have caused an irrevocable worldwide economic collapse over the course of the next 24 hours.

(The bad news starts at 1:53)

So, are we to believe that millions of Americans woke up that day and spontaneously decided to clear out their money market savings over lunch hour?  Otherwise, this begs one question: who did?

It does, however, explain much of the panic-mode reactionary policy of the last few months. Looks like the bank bailouts were, indeed, more about preventing short term economic nuclear meltdown than long term stimulus.  I just wish these policies were being implemented more openly.

Acknowledgments: big thanks to wilkes for linking me to this.