It wasn’t a single entity but rather institutional investors (Putnam, Bank of New York Mellon etc) looking for fund liquidity in an uncertain moment. Basically Money Markets represent the “safest” investment. You should never lose your principle investment. So the unit value should not drop below $1.00. For each dollar you put in, you should expect a the very least, your dollar back. What happened that day was that due to Lehman Bros. default of debt to these funds, they technically didn’t have the assets to cover the $1.00 unit price. Institutional funds fearing a customer revolt, got spooked and wanted to cash out before things got really ugly. In a self fulfilling prophesy, the unit values went down further as more money was pulled out. Bank Panic on a large scale if you will.

The biggest issue facing the country is the deflation of the housing markets thereby making more assets toxic and therefore necessitating more bailout money.

We are all witness to history. Stay tuned..

I hear ACORN will registering a lot of dead people and Rahm Emmanuel, the new director of the census, will be certifying them as legit.