Video – What Does The FDIC Do When Your Bank Fails

This video was from 2008…the last time bank failures were the Big Thing in the news. I’d imagine that the process has changed a bit since then, but it is still interesting nonetheless.

I have no idea why anyone would keep money in the bank. It earns virtually no interest, so that’s not really a valid reason. I suppose the only real reason is because youre simply afraid to trust your nest egg to a gun safe or a hole in your backyard.

The notion, expressed in the video, that the FDIC won’t cost the taxpayers anything because the FDIC gets its funds from premiums paid by the bank is…well…a platttude to allay the concerns of people who are paying attention. If enough banks fail, or enough banks with large losses, that backstop that the FDIC is holding will evaporate. And, as they said rather clearly in the video, they then ‘borrow’ from Treasury. Which means…..the taxpayer is on the hook.

When I was younger I recall meeting people who had parents who lived through the Depression, or grandparents who did, and some of them never recovered any faith in banks.

My own banking needs are pretty small….I keep money in a checking account to fund my debit card for various purchases, and thats about it. The rest of my money goes into silver, gold, investing, Roth, and cash-in-hand. If any of those tank, I’ve got enough elsewhere to keep me going. And if it all collapses…silver and gold become worthless, the banks disappear, the cash devalues to zero, and the stock market crashes. Well, thats a situation where money is way down the list of priorities and food, ammo, and fuel become primary measurements of wealth.

But…if you see some guys in suits outside your bank at 4:59pm on a Friday patiently waiting for the last customer to leave….well….maybe you might wanna get back on line and make a withdrawal.

18 thoughts on “Video – What Does The FDIC Do When Your Bank Fails

  1. Well, if your bank is full of those supporting the right political party, they pay everyone’s money back.

  2. Money? In the BANK?
    Agreed, just enough to cover debit card purchases and provide for bill paying. Generally, money leaves the account the day it arrives, leaving just enough to keep the card viable for day to day stuff.

  3. What your seeing is Old Joey Shitty Britches executing his plan to Nationalize the banking system.
    Heard this am that at least twenty private jets were on the ground in Omaha for a meeting with Buffet. They have asked him for advice. Which if it makes sense, they will not follow.

  4. We got out of ‘banks’ awhile ago and for finances use a small local credit union. I’m retired and “The System” requires direct deposit of monthly funds so… account in the credit union to fuel debt card and park a small bit of savings where said deposits can be made. The nice thing is they don’t care if you show up on the first week of every month and pull out a bunch of cash – it’s sort of normal for them and their customers. If you have to have a bank, this is the way to go.

    The credit union is ‘member owned’ and has one building – it ain’t getting bought out or acquired by any other financial institution as the member board is a bunch of cranky old farts who are only interested in keeping it all small and manageable.

  5. if you don’t have it in your hand, truck, bunker, or home then you don’t have it. Fidelity gives me a bunch of numbers on paper and the internet, which is worthless when the Russians and Chinese start lobbing nukes at us. CZ is correct, hard assets will be of great value when SHTF.

    Bullets, beans and band aids, might as well throw in water, gasoline and diesel too.

    My Grandmother lived through the depression and kept cash at home. Years ago my brothers elderly neighbor who survived the holocaust and had a concentration camp number tatoo on her arm, didn’t trust banks and had a lot of cashed stashed in her home. My SIL helped her out with household chores and the old woman was always very much appreciated having a next-door neighbor that she could count on and not rob her. I always wondered what happened to all that cash when she passed away.

  6. “And if it all collapses…silver and gold become worthless”. Gold and silver can never become ‘worthless’ as 5,000 years of use as money has shown us. They have no counterparty risk and as Bill Holter likes to say ” Gold and silver are the only money in the world that can’t go bankrupt in a world going bankrupt”. There’s a reason that gold was reclassified as a tier one asset by the bankster’s.

    • This is true. But, intellectually, just because something has ‘always’ been a particular way is no guarantee that it will always continue that way. Is there a high likelihood? Absolutely. Is it a virtual certainty? Yes. But it’s not a 100% lock.
      But gold and silver (or any other tangible item) can become ‘worthless’ when no one wants it. Two guys adrift in a lifeboat, for example, aren’t gong to bargain with each where one guy will trade his last canteen of fresh water for a krugerand.
      Gold and silver, in my opinion, have a place in preparedness. That place is in the ‘descent phase’ of a crisis. It’s like a parachute….when the plane is on the ground, it’s worth whatever one parachute is worth. When the plane is in the air and flying normally, its worth whatever a parachute is worth. But when the plane is spiralling to the earth with dead engines….thats where the parachute becomes valuable beyond it’s objective worth.

      Gold and silver are fairly ignored during pre-collapse times, and in Mad Max world they’ll be supplanted by more useful tangibles….but in that slow descent into anarchy, where paper currency fails but we aren’t at the stage of trading canned goods yet, thats where it will be most useful.

      • Nothing is 100%, but physical gold and silver are as close as one could get to financial insurance during austere times.

          • The prices change but the value never does. My metals buy the same amount of goods and services today, as they did 100, 1,000 years ago.

  7. I’m a low-level stacker, and I agree with CZ that the value of metals versus other tangibles will change at various times. When non-stackers ask me for advice, I tell them to not put a nickel into metals until they have their water, food, meds, firearms and ammo in really, really good shape. Plus there’s the fact that metals will have to be exchanged for the items you need, exposing you to the very considerable risks of barter. I’d really enjoy a good primer on the do’s and don’ts of post-Apocalypse bartering, especially bartering with precious metals. Yes, I’ll search the archives here.

    • Dude, I’m no expert. I don’t think anyone is unless they were trading Swiss Francs to the Wehrmacht border guards in ’39 to escape Germany. I doubt there’s very many people anywhere with experience trading metals for vital goods when their economy collapsed. Maybe some Venezuelans but that would be about it. Anything I know about the subject would be just wild-ass theory and speculation.

      For me, the gold and silver is for when our money is hyperinflating and becoming worthless but I still need to get critical gear from the stores before it’s all gone.

      • Miguel at Gun Free Zone might have some useful thoughts ref precious metals in a collapse, being an alumnus of Venezuela’s slide.

        Similarly Selco, a graduate of the Yugoslavian “unpleasantness”.

  8. Although I am a prepper/survivalist my wife is not on board to the extent that she will pull every nickel out of the credit union and bank. Zero you were correct when you said banks do not pay anything on your savings account but recent developments with the Fed raising rates has changed that scene. At least I moved the bulk of our savings account from zero interest at our credit union to a bank that pays 3.60% with no withdrawal conditions or penalties.

    So yes as mentioned above if you don’t have in your hand you don’t have it. To keep peace in the household I have to go this route. But I have checked all the boxes on goods and tangibles like the Commander despite my wife shaking her head at times at the stash in the basement.

    Wife : What are you doing down there?
    Me: Doing some reloading.
    Wife: Don’t you have enough?
    Me: You can never have too much ammo.
    Wife: sheesh!

  9. After the bank bail outs of 2007-2008, law was enacted that called for all banks to ‘bail in’ before they get bailed out.

    According to a quick look at Investopedia…

    Bank Bail-In vs. Bank Bailout

    Bail-ins and bailouts are designed to prevent the complete collapse of a failing bank. The difference between the two lies primarily in who bears the financial burden of rescuing the bank.

    With bailouts, the government injects capital into banks, enabling them to continue their operations. During the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the government injected $700 billion into companies like Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), and American International Group (AIG) using taxpayer dollars.2

    Bail-ins provide immediate relief when banks use money from their unsecured creditors, including depositors and bondholders, to restructure their capital. Banks can convert their debt into equity to increase their capital requirements. Although depositors run the risk of losing some of their deposits, banks can only use deposits over the $250,000 protection provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

    So a couple weeks ago when the govt said they would save all the depositors at SVB, they are essentially going around the law to use taxpayer money to make rich people whole after losing their uninsured funds after SVB ‘bailed in’.

    • If the threshold for the FDIC protection is $250,000, Im not sure I would think of anyone with more than that in a bank as ‘rich’.

      • Exactly. And they used FDIC funds to make rich people and companies whole in the case of SVB, which some (ok, many) would call a misuse of the fund.

        Last week’s testimony about not saving little, poor people banks, as well as the treasuries plans for how they will announce the coming banking collapse (read: late Friday after the banks are all closed) was interesting.

        Went to the bank Friday to withdraw some walking around money, and was jumped about buying a CD at a pretty favorable rate. The hook? At least some of the money had to come from another bank or tin can in the back yard. Deposits are low everywhere. They won’t tell us banks are failing stress tests until its too late.

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