A Financial History of the United States Money Market Funds Appear: “An even darker cloud, at least for the banks, appeared on the horizon. Henry B.R. Brown and Bruce R. Bent invented the money market fund in 1971 in order to avoid th restrictions in Regulation Q that limited intertest rates on bank deposits…The Merrill Lynch Ready Assets Trust…was started in 1975 and required a minimum investment of $5,000. This fund grew in one year by $40 billion…Further, there were no penalties for early withdrawals from money market accounts, unlike deposits invested in certificates of deposits (CDs)…The Colorado State Banking Board even brought an action against Merrill Lynch’s programs, charging that Merrill was illegally acting as a bank. That effort failed, and the growth of the money market funds continued.
VIDEO: “Money As Debt” — evolution of the central banking system (http://www.naturalmoney.org/)
The Crash, 1929 by Kenneth Gilbraith (page 11) “Early in 1928 the nature of the boom changed. The mass escape into make believe, so much a part of the true speculative orgy, started in earnest. It was still necessary to reassure those who required some tie, however tenuous, to reality… However, the time had come, as in all periods of speculation, when men sought not to be persuaded of the reality of things but to find excuses for escaping into the new world of fantasy.” Google Books
FinancialEndTimes.com 