The Motley Fool has this:

Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski of Pennsylvania reveals some shocking information regarding a bank run which occured right here and indeed brought this country and the entire world economy to within three hours of complete and systemic financial collapse. In this video, Congressman Kanjorski reveals (at about the 2:15 mark) that the move to raise the move to guarantee money market funds up to $250,000 was an emergency measure to stave off a massive run on the banks that removed $550 billion from the system in a matter of just a couple of hours. Treasury then injected $105 billion to no avail, and shut the system down to prevent a panic continuation of this electronic bank run.

Bloomberg's got a note about the UK system nearly going belly up in October. Now we're hearing Geithner say the bailout must go on, to shore up the economy.
The 1987 Stock Market Crash resulted from a computer glitch -- or, did it? Note the probable causes include derivatives in the 1987 crash, as well as "illiquidity". The feared recession didn't materialize in 1987 (yeah, right; but no, it wasn't as bad as it could've been) because the Fed stepped in. Did the September and October 2008 bank runs arise from a similar source?

Won't embed, here's the url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD8viQ_DhS4

That video makes me wonder. Yeah, I know -- it's not exactly firsthand. But there are others out there, according to the Fool, who has some serious links at his post on the subject (quoted above).

If so, does this mean that there IS NO fix for this particular problem, and the market needs to "correct" back to its pre-1987 values? IF that were to happen, allegedly, the economy would collapse -- and so, apparently, would the political system as we know it.

I don't know how much of this was revealed to then-Sen. Obama (now President Obama) but this suggests strongly to me -- and not only am I not an economist but nor do I play one on TV, the radio, or the Internet -- that the policies and interventions which "successfully" followed the 1987 Black Monday not only weren't really successful (remember how often Greenspan tinkered with a "soft landing"?) in preventing the collapse, but have done more harm than good in the intervening years.

It's entirely possible to my mind that the Crash of 87 really WAS the outcome of Reaganomics, and hiding / delaying tactics over the 20 years intervening have allowed the problem to fester. The abscess has, evidently, not yet drained, either -- and it looks from here like the Geithner solution isn't to drain the abscess and clean the wound and promote real healing, but to try to distract the patient.

If this infection does indeed go systemic -- and the septicemia is growing or we wouldn't be hearing about layoffs worldwide -- the political collapse Bernanke and Company fought off back in September will follow. Maybe soon, maybe later. Thing is, the longer we let it go on, the sicker the world economy'll be, and we have no way of knowing whether it's already too late.