The present turmoil has also led to a mass run on the financial system—this time not by panicked individuals desperate to withdraw their money but by panicked bankers and investors pulling their money out of financial institutions of all stripes, not only commercial banks but investment banks, money market funds, hedge funds, and all those mysterious “off-balance-sheet special-purpose vehicles” that have sprung up over the past decade. Every financial institution that depends on wholesale funding from its peers has been threatened to a greater or lesser degree.
