So basically every night, after trading closes, people put in bids that make it look like things are going to crash at open tomorrow. So the Fed says, "Hey, don't worry. For half an hour we are going to artificially inflate the prices to their previous state so nobody loses money." So the sellers begin trading at market open, knowing they are protected from the price dropping below a certain point, and go on their merry way trading just like nothing is wrong. But something is VERY wrong; those aren't market prices. Those are gerrymandered prices that do not reflect the actual value of the items being traded. It's just insider trading, but everyone is an insider, and knows it can't go on, but they can't NOT do it, or they'd lose money (and their jobs). So their ACTUAL confidence is weakened every single day, while their reportable performance in the market makes them seem confident in a robust economy... and everyone knows the king is naked, but they cheer and follow him down the path anyway... And then something happens that people didn't predict... and everything collapses, but nobody has models for what to do in THIS collapse, because the potential outcomes were unpredictable... but the fact that it WOULD happen is expected. What a clusterfuck.
Take it back a step: this is the WSJ video on Repo markets I linked in the post "why did the Karens suddenly stop lending." Because it still amuses the fuck out of me that the WSJ is referring to "marks" (institutions who buy) and "Karens" (banks that stop lending). There's a lot of jargon in finance. I have beef with this. So basically: In order to buy and sell stuff while also owning stuff, there needs to be a market where stuff collateralizes money. There's an organization whose job it is to control how much profit that market makes and starting in September, that market started telling the organization to eat shit. The organization responded by filling it full of money so that now, it is controlling how much profit that market makes by pouring money into it. In short, a closed system is now open. This "closed system is now open" is the basic shape of every financial crisis you've ever seen, but don't tell the rubes that.