Good advice Bro. Knowledge Seed. Now if you are keeping your money in the bank make sure you have all your paper work for your account that outlines that your money is insured up to $100,000 by the FDIC. Wamu has collapsed, it's possible a domino effect might proceed. Wachovia might save it's behind by merging but Bank of America and others will be having an interesting time, you see all of these institutions had some of the same investments in the same pot.
Your money market account, CD, IRA account etc., those might be very safe for now- regular saving and checking accounts might be the issue. If the banks go "bankrupt" what will happen is the FDIC would tap it's reserves to cover the amount in your account, but we should question the length of this process and what will happen when the FDIC has to payout billions to millions of people. Basically all they will do is have more money printed, the us dollar is not backed up by anything but psychology anyway.
Some regular credit unions also deal with larger corporate credit unions that deal in mortgage securities, this is also a major issue. Credit unions usually have a good standing when it comes to gaining back from a loss, but there is really no template for what could happen if the entire banking system fails.
Now we have a $700 billion bailout, didn't we have a $600 tax refund incentive just recently- what did that do? Most of people didn't get it because some of these same institutions were collecting it to pay debt. If you owe on student loans for example you didn't get an incentive check. And if you did most likely it went into gas or paying down credit cards.
African people already have a cash-less system, it's called bartering. We'd be wiser to learn more about this system because I already see it's the only thing saving our butts.
