Someone needs to snug their tinfoil hat down tight and try to figure out who or what got us into this financial mess. Did it just happen, or was it a deliberate plan in order to make money or help Obama get elected? Consider the attached video featuring Rep. Paul Kanjorski saying the following:

"On Thursday Sep. 15, 2008 [note: he probably means Sep. 18] at roughly 11 AM The Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw down of money market accounts in the USA to the tune of $550 Billion dollars in a matter of an hour or two... Money was being removed electronically... The treasury tried to help with $150 Billion... But could not stem the tide... It was an electronic run on the banks... The treasury intervened but had they not closed down the accounts they estimated that by 2 PM that afternoon. Within 3 hours. $5.5 Trillion would have been withdrawled and collapsed and within 24 hours the world economy."

Speculation on this here, here, and here. See "Five Things: Five Deflationary Forces to Watch Now" (link), 10/10/08's "Panicky Sellers Darken Afternoon on Wall Street" (link), and 9/15/08's "Lehman Brothers collapse stuns global markets" (link). Kanjorski supposedly lied about the Clinton's involvement in the issue (link).

UPDATE: See also "Liberals Plan Return to the New Deal" (link) back from May 2008. That includes the following Kanjorski quote:

"All we're doing is going into the basket and saying, 'Damn, what did they do in '32, what did they do in '34, what did they do in '36,' and we're pulling them out, dusting them off, giving them a paint job, correcting the fenders a bit, and we're using them... To get us through the horrendous problems we may have over the next several years, we've got to make these old programs work, and we've got to be as inventive as hell."

See also this and this regarding Securities and Exchange Commission Christopher Cox eliminating the uptick rule. And, see July 13, 2008's "(Chuck Schumer): Don't blame me for IndyMac failure" (link).

UPDATE 2: There's a better transcript here. Also, in April 2008 Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton liquidated a blind trust containing between $5 and $25 million in stock (link), converting it into cash; the reason given was to avoid a conflict of interest, which is probably accurate. And, from Sep. 17, 2008 (link):

What is going on here? I suspect there is a run on money market funds, or at least the ones that do not own only super-safe assets. With the money going into Treasury funds, they must find very-short-term Treasuries to buy.

UPDATE 3: Now, Kanjorski says his source for his statements was not some sort of secret briefing but was simply the New York Post article "ALMOST ARMAGEDDON/MARKETS WERE 500 TRADES FROM A MELTDOWN" (link) from Sep. 21, 2008. That doesn't exactly make Kanjorski look great, but the fact remains that the current crisis may have been manufactured.

12/29/11 UPDATE: The account with the video that was here (Youtube ID _NMu1mFao3w) was deleted, I added a video that might have the same quote above.