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Sep. 19th, 2008
Nothing like a dose of cold, hard truth offered up by the inimitable ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sophiaserpentia to make the warm, sunny day seem ominous. I differ from her post slightly in that the Glass-Steagall Act was effectively gutted and repealed with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (stop and think of where you have heard those names before) Act in 1999. Now, banks are just stomping on the ashes of the corpse.
This is why my grandmother, a child of the depression, never kept more in a bank than she could afford to lose. Most of her money was kept in a safe behind the gun rack. She regarded a checking account as a less-exciting form of blackjack.
Maybe she was right.
We're at that point again. Banks are reestablishing the right to use depositor funds to insure against losses. That means what it sounds like it means - your bank account could, at any time, become hollow numbers. The money may not actually be there.
Next step, if history holds, is banks shortening their hours, and restricting amounts customers can withdraw on any given day (interesting to see how this will play out in the era of ATMs and online banking), to prevent "bank runs". Such a poetic term.
sophiaserpentia to make the warm, sunny day seem ominous. I differ from her post slightly in that the Glass-Steagall Act was effectively gutted and repealed with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley (stop and think of where you have heard those names before) Act in 1999. Now, banks are just stomping on the ashes of the corpse.This is why my grandmother, a child of the depression, never kept more in a bank than she could afford to lose. Most of her money was kept in a safe behind the gun rack. She regarded a checking account as a less-exciting form of blackjack.
Maybe she was right.
We're at that point again. Banks are reestablishing the right to use depositor funds to insure against losses. That means what it sounds like it means - your bank account could, at any time, become hollow numbers. The money may not actually be there.
Next step, if history holds, is banks shortening their hours, and restricting amounts customers can withdraw on any given day (interesting to see how this will play out in the era of ATMs and online banking), to prevent "bank runs". Such a poetic term.
