“But, really, what right does a bank have to say that you can’t have YOUR money?”
Because when you put money in a bank, it’s not YOUR money, it’s the BANK’s money!
What people don’t realize is that when they deposit money in a bank, it’s not for the purpose of the bank to hold on to THEIR money for THEIR convenience, but what they are really doing is LOANING their money to the bank! They are actually a lender and not a depositor. And once they loan the money to the bank, it’s no longer their money, it’s the bank’s money! This is all spelled out in the account agreement one signs with a bank, and by loaning your money to the bank you’re giving the bank permission to use the money you loaned them pretty much as they see fit, and there is no real guarantee that you’ll ever get back any of the money you loaned the bank!
Prior to the illusion of FDIC insured deposits (loans) and it’s equivalent in other countries, banks used to go bankrupt all the time, completely wiping out ALL investors’ deposits. That was a big part of the death spiral of the Great Depression and why it was necessary for FDIC insurance to be invented, or otherwise no sane person would ever loan their money to a bank again.
And like in the EU, the FDIC actually only insures accounts up to a certain limit, and for anything over that there simply are no guarantees you’ll ever get the money you loaned the bank back. Period.
Now when banks DO go bankrupt, there are SUPPOSED to be lawful ways in which the remaining assets are distributed to the banks debt holders in an orderly, lawful fashion, the depositors being simply one class of debt holder. That process has worked pretty well in the U.S. recently, but given the propensity of the Obammunists to ignore the law and just do what they feel like, all bets are off for the future.
And in places like Cyprus, it sounds like they didn’t have ready-made procedures for bank bankruptcies anyway, so they had to make some up quickly. One could label such ex-post facto, ad hoc measures “theft”, but the net result to those foolish enough to make giant loans (deposits) to these crappy banks would probably be pretty much the same if Cyprus had a U.S.-like process in place prior to bank bankruptcy anyway, namely the depositors money has simply completely evaporated because the banks made really, really bad investments with their depositors’ loaned money, and they’d wind up with nothing anyway.
And most likely nothing criminal has been involved here either, except maybe criminal stupidity or maybe criminal greed by both the depositors and the banks themselves. Because the depositors were chasing unrealistic returns promised by the bank, and which they the bank delivered by “investing” their depositors money in Greek bonds. Greek bonds were paying extremely high interest rates, but the high interest rates were being paid because it was likely the bonds would fail, which is exactly what happened.
The takeaway lesson here, though, is simply don’t loan your money to a bank. Just keep enough money in your bank account to pay next month’s bills. Even better switch as much of your transactions as possible to cash. It’s actually easier to do than most people think. For example, I live in a small town and pay all of my insurance and property taxes by simply walking in and plunking down the cash. I could do the same thing for my utilities if I wanted. And I never use plastic except when I buy stuff on the Internet.
Excellent response/reply. The reality is when we make a deposit at a bank. They treat our deposit as a loan to the bank. Like any loan to a corporation/business, all or part can be lost if the corporation/business goes bankrupt.
“Because when you put money in a bank, it’s not YOUR money, it’s the BANK’s money!
What people don’t realize is that when they deposit money in a bank, it’s not for the purpose of the bank to hold on to THEIR money for THEIR convenience, but what they are really doing is LOANING their money to the bank! They are actually a lender and not a depositor. And once they loan the money to the bank, it’s no longer their money, it’s the bank’s money! This is all spelled out in the account agreement one signs with a bank, and by loaning your money to the bank you’re giving the bank permission to use the money you loaned them pretty much as they see fit, and there is no real guarantee that you’ll ever get back any of the money you loaned the bank!”