In the United States, the governmentsponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were placed into conservatorship, and Lehman Brothers Holdings and several other large financial institutions either failed, nearly failed, or were acquired by competitors under distressed circumstances.
Losses at money market mutual funds led to large withdrawals by their investors, and those outflows undermined both the stability of short-term funding markets, particularly the commercial paper market, and confidence in wholesale bank funding markets.