Rep. Kanjorski Describes Electronic Run On U.S. Banks, Sept. 18, 2008

A Run.

Whatever one thinks about The Bailout, Representative Paul Kanjorski's description of pending economic meltdown is the best I've found. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD8viQ_DhS4

Others present at the 2008 Bernanke/Paulson meeting (which Kanjorski describes) say that all Bush's emissaries represented the accelerating economic vortex as so dire that martial law would be declared unless the banking system was immediately reinforced by what we now call The Bailout. 

When humans lose their footing and fall into boundless fear, a threshold is reached at which people go crazy. 

Craziness takes many forms, but whatever form it takes it has no patience for measured democratic discussion. 

In brief, there is no room for Reason.

It can be argued that, on that fateful day, Bernanke was falsifying the record and that his real intention was to use a fictitious "crisis" to advance the cause of a "banking coup" or to justify the expropriation of taxpayer wealth into bankers' pockets. (One difficulty with such scenarios is that 700 to 800 billion dollars is a trivial sum relative to the amounts of money to be made in a healthy economy. To pilfer a trillion taxpayer dollars at the expense of global economic calamity is a course of action anathema to the banking system. Yes, Cowboy Capitalists are crazy. But they're not that crazy.)

We are living in a time of self-reinforcing plutocratic impulse. But it is not possible -- as a practical matter -- for Americans to harbor such deep cynicism about their officials without a collapse of confidence that will result in widespread lunacy. (Perhaps this is what has happened.)

The survival of any financial system depends on "full faith and credit."

When faith and credibility are radically undermined, financial systems collapse and empires crumble.

It is "the nature of the beast" that "this side of barter," no financial system based on "symbolic" exchange instruments (such as green pieces of paper and stock certificates) can survive - much less thrive - unless we first make foundational Acts of Faith.

In finance there is no proof because there can be no proof.

There is only faith. 

"In God We Trust."

We either live our financial lives faithfully, or, in the absence of faith, financial systems collapse.

                                                                                                       

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Here is Reprentative Kanjorski's Wikpedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanjorski