Do you think we have too many banks in the United States? There were 8,451 FDIC-insured banks as of June 30, 2008. Canada, on the other hand, with 1/10th of the population as the U.S., only has 81 banks, which can be listed on one page. On a per capita basis, we have 10 times [...]
For reasons I won’t go into details, I need to send $100 to someone in Mexico. I’m not in a big hurry. The money doesn’t have to be there in minutes or hours, but I don’t want it to take weeks or months either. Obviously I’m interested in reliability and cost, both in fees and [...]
I asked on Monday who robbed FDIC $6 billion from the IndyMac Bank failure. Too bad more of you didn’t chime in. Come on, don’t be shy. It’s not fun if it’s just me yapping all the time. Anyway, here are my thoughts.
1. Defaulted Borrowers. IndyMac took in deposits and lent out the money as [...]
On the way back from work last Friday, I heard on the radio IndyMac Bank was closed by authorities and taken over by FDIC. IndyMac Bank had $19 billion in deposits. This failure is the largest in recent history. It matched in size the Bank of New England failure in 1991.
In previous bank failures, FDIC [...]
