this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Many people would lose their savings.

In Germany, everyone is protected up to 100,000 €. So it would actually be a nice reset button where only the rich would "suffer"

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Yeah except it's backed up by the government. So if it all comes due with the exact same time the people are still paying that money either way.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Deposit guarantee schemes (DGS) reimburse up to a certain amount to compensate depositors whose bank has failed. A fundamental principle underlying DGS is that they are funded entirely by banks, and that no taxpayer funds are used.

Source: ECB

It works by having a central fund to back the money that qualifies for the deposit guarantee, however said funds only contains 0,8% of covered deposits. Although this might seem small, this is still a large amount of capital (~40 billion euro), and should be able to cover all deposits during a major financial crisis (like 2008) according to this research (ECB funded).

[–] d00phy@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago

Similar with the US FDIC:

The FDIC is primarily funded through assessments, which are insurance premiums paid by FDIC-insured institutions. These assessments are based on the balance of insured deposits and the risk posed by each bank. Additionally, the FDIC's Deposit Insurance Fund is invested in U.S. Treasury securities, earning interest that supplements the premiums paid by banks.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I didn't understand your second sentence, can you clarify that a bit?

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well who is the government? Where do they get their money? It's it's us it's the people. If the nation suddenly owes trillions of dollars to all its people nobody's getting any money. Best case scenario they just say fuck it nobody's getting anything. Worst case scenario the country literally collapses.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I thought it was some kind of written guarantee that the banks would only invest/divest the money over the 100k threshold, where if the bank collapses there'd still be the fallback of the money it didn't invest, and as I'm typing this I instantly know it's not true and that banks play it all fast and loose and hope that no one finds out...

I see your point.

[–] kambusha@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Banks do have strict risk requirements (i.e. Basel III), in terms of what they are allowed to do with money, and are stress-tested on a regular basis. However, the type of scenario OP is posing would mean every bank would need to write-off their loans, and hope they have capital invested in other places to keep them afloat.

Since banks have these capital at risk requirements, the government feels comfortable to guarantee accounts up to a certain amount, as every bank going down at the same time is generally speaking a very unlikely event. So usually they would cover the account, take over the bank (if needed), put it into administration, and wind-down positions to claw back money to cover the insurance claims.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

Ah I see, thanks for the extra context!

[–] grid11@lemy.nl 1 points 1 month ago

... and with the help of inflation hack

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago

That only applies to cash. The rich have the greater majority of their wealth in assets, so they likely won't even give a second thought to losing all of their cash. Who it's actually going to hurt are the middle class workers nearing retirement. The ones who make enough to have some semblance of a retirement fund and who have also moved this fund to cash to reduce volatility.

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 month ago

So it would actually be a nice reset button where only the rich would β€œsuffer”

It would be nice but there's always a way...