call me a cynic, but has anyone actually verified that what this guy says is correct..
i worked on a trading floor at a major US bank and i have a degree in economics. its sometimes mind boggling to see the lack of knowledge of some of these senators.
to put it in a tech perspective, remember back to the "series of tubes.."
1. The Fed publishes -several- press releases every day. They report on the most mundane issues (meeting times, etc) up to their financial decisions. So this event must have been mentioned in a press release.
2. The best match I found was this one: (http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/2008...). If it is about the same event, they described the crisis as "elevated pressure in U.S. dollar short-term funding markets." Response: $180 billion dollar increase in swap lines by the Fed.
This press release was posted on Sept 18th this year, the date of the supposed catastrophe.
3. I couldn't find a single reputable news source or agency that even hinted at a possible catastrophe.
For your amusement, Google "federal reserve 550 billion" and watch the Ron Paul references fly by. Considering the lack of supporting evidence I think it's safe to say the world wasn't about to end on Sept 18th this year.
I'm not sure about the 550 billion number, but there was a run on the markets that week. On September 19th, the US Treasury put in a guarantee on money market funds [1]. The commercial paper market froze that week as well. That alone put the US economy near complete collapse. Figures such as 3 hours are somewhat arbitrary, but don't dismiss the seriousness of financial crisis that week in September.
Were you seriously looking for the word "catastrophe" in federal reserve press releases? Try to keep in mind that the DJIA can collapse if the fed chairman has the hiccups--so, they tend to wrap everything in "fedspeak"
...what really happened was that the fed gave FDIC-style assurances to the money markets, which are not regulated in the manner of FDIC-insured commercial banks. That sounds boring as hell, I know.
i worked on a trading floor at a major US bank and i have a degree in economics. its sometimes mind boggling to see the lack of knowledge of some of these senators.
to put it in a tech perspective, remember back to the "series of tubes.."