Zero Hedge has an interesting, and pretty scary, piece on "How the World Almost Came to an End" last fall. It appears that someone or something was gaming the financial markets and came very close to bringing down the whole U.S. economy [at least that's how Paul Kanjorski saw it at the time].
One name immediately springs to mind... Soros. Could he have been..., naaah! But still....
Read about it here.
UPDATE:
David John explains that the outflow of funds was simply "hot money" chasing higher interest rates. [here]
