From Bloomberg

Barton Biggs, however, says the fears of hedge fund withdrawals are overblown.

There is no question that a lot of money is coming out of the hedge fund space. Let's look at the $1.9 trillion. Losses have probably reduced it by 25%, to $1.4 trillion. Based on what I see and hear, $350 billion to $420 billion will be withdrawn by the middle of next year. Probably about $150 billion has already gone.

That means that there is about $250 billion to go (again, I am talking worldwide). That's not a huge amount, but what the bears are terribly worried about is that presumably this money is leveraged, and so to raise the cash, hedge funds will have to sell two to three times that much.

In fact, at least one huge fund has been liquidating leveraged positions. But I don't think that's the start of a wave. First, the prime brokers for the industry report that the hedge fund industry's net long position is now around 20% of their equity, an all-time low.

Hedge funds have heard the redemption footsteps: They have already sold down their long portfolios and tremendously reduced their gross book and leverage. It is a fact that hedge fund margin debt has been declining since July 2007, and prime brokers report massive hedge fund cash holdings.

Biggs also notes the following, of which I agree.

In every bear market I have seen, the doomsayers concoct a statistical argument that the glory days for stocks are over, because a flood of selling by brutalized investors is inevitable, and the buyers have no money. This case always seems most compelling close to the end of the declines and is always marked by a wave of media pronouncements. Remember Business Week's "The Death of Equities" cover in 1980? Recent covers from Business Week and The Economist have had similarly dire alarms.

Peter Schiff was on Fast Money this evening talking about the collapse of the economy.  He may be right but I suspect the uber-bears will overplay their hand as they did in 2002 when they called for the Dow to go to 5000.