OK, not to piddle upon the NWO conspiracy parade here, but to attribute this to some dark conspiracy when there are explanations that are based in easily documented reality is absurd.
As a result of the Lehman implosion, a couple of money market funds here in the US “broke the buck.” There was another money market fund used by hedge funds in Europe that broke the buck earlier in the year.
The Reserve Primary Fund had a $700+ million write-down of Lehman paper, which resulted in their NAV going to $0.97/share. The Reserve Primary Fund was worth about $60B, and the Reserve International Liquidity Fund had yet more.
OK, so why would this cause a run like this? To discover that one of the oldest money market funds in the US, with assets over $50B, has suffered such a loss as a result of Lehman, and Lehman was one of the largest dealers in the world of commercial paper, and money market funds invest in short-term government and AAA commercial paper... suddenly, people start to panic. They don’t know who is exposed to Lehman’s paper. They don’t know what that paper is worth.
There had been the auction-rate paper scandal earlier last year, where it turned out that the market for the paper was highly dependent upon the broker/dealers making market in the paper, and here Lehman has just gone down in flames.
There is no doubt in my mind that thousands of fund managers, brokers, banks, you name it all came to a collective decision following the implosion of Lehman on September 14th to September 15th: sell first, ask questions later. Because in this type of situation, the last one to sell is the one left holding the bag.
There were huge outflows in money market funds all over the market. No one person could have put together those withdrawals. No how, no way. It was a case of thousands upon thousands of fund managers, brokers/dealers, asset management firms, you name it — all seeing the problems caused by Lehman’s collapse on Monday morning (9/15) and they just started pulling triggers. They didn’t care, they didn’t think, they didn’t ask for details. All they knew was that there might be exposure to Lehman’s book, they wanted none of that exposure, that it could cause them serious losses.... so triggers were pulled, sell orders sent, and you get what we had.
This thing can happen again. If Obama keeps running around yapping about doom and gloom, investors may again panic and seek a safe haven in gold, Euros, oil (remember $147/bbl?), etc. Panic is NOT good in financial markets.