So... if you were the fed and you needed to shrink the money supply to prop up the sinking dollar, how would you do it without asking citizens to give their dollars back?
Simple, sell a financial crisis to Americans and congress:
Then, after the fear mongering on Capital Hill two weeks ago, the 'Commercial Paper' market freezes up and the Fed makes moves to take that over. One more option for them to collect interest from banks and corporations that need to borrow massive amounts (we're talking billions and trillions here) of short term funds.
Now, private banks are consolidating and being bought up by the fed.