Second hour is weekly local journo confab. Local business reporter was just on the radio talking about the $100k deposit insurance limit and the collapse of WaMu. (Washington Mutual) She talked about depositors withdrawing $16B and everyone reducing their exposuire down to the $100k FDIC limit and I felt like I had been socked in the gut.
Why? A few years ago I was part of a decision to move an organizations accounts TO WaMu because they are local and quite responsible in many respects compared to other options. This org has fund above the $100k FDIC limit but not much above whoever's defnition of "middle class" is $250k. The decision to move accounts was before WaMu bought into one big subprime lender but the org did not change anything until recently when alert finance committee thought it prudent to break up assets and keep accounts below the FDIC limit and of course became one of the depositors causing the run on WaMu.
This is just lowkey financial prudence, not the intentional stomps of jackbooted fascism but look at the results. A bank previously viewed favorably failed because of something, the $100k limit that should probably have been changed a long time ago just because of rising incomes, and that change could quite sensibly and justifiably have been made as a routine part of banking legislation. Why did it have to come with the rest of the rot in the bailout?.
DC On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 10:51 AM, Charles Brown < charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
>
>
>
> Marvin Gandall wrote:
>
> > There's a definite whiff of fascism around Palin and the
> > constituency she
> > represents - an insular nastiness under that down home neighbourless
>
> > and
> > gemutlichtkeit.
>
> C'mon, this is ancient American political/cultural kitsch. Small town,
>
> patriotic, xenophobic, elite-hating, aggressively ordinary. It's
> overkill to call it fascist.
>
> Doug
>
> ^^^
>
> If there is a _big_ danger of economic collapse, recession and even
> depression from the current crisis, the result might be socialism, but
> there is also a danger of fascism.
>
> Or what is the big danger right here, right now, we (the great mass
> majority of the People) face if these Wall street banks aren't bailed
> out ? Why the panic to bailout the banks to avoid liquidity freezing up
> or drying up if there is no danger to the well being of the vast
> majority ?
>
> "There is no premature anti-fascism" - Ernest Hemingway
>
>
>
>
>
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