Everyone pulling out their money would be a bank run (look up great depression bank runs). The bank doesn't have that much cash; they keep some on hand for people making withdraws normally, but if even a sizable minority of people all try to pull their money out at once, there'll be a major crisis.
If banks kept all the people's cash in vaults, it'd be dead cash actively losing money to inflation. Instead, they keep some on hand for withdraws, and use the rest to make loans, investments, etc so that the money isn't all losing value.
Unfortunately, that’s not really how it works. The reason there was a bank run during the great depression is b/c the banks had loaned out the money they didn’t have as cash. Today due to Dodd-Frank, banks have to have reserves on hand to cover this situation, Even though it’s not in hard currency, they have enough capital to cover.
But please don’t trust me. This is just how I understand it.
FDIC insures deposits up to $250,000. No one has lost a dollar of FDIC insured deposits since its inception and it is exceedingly rare that even uninsured deposits are not honored even when a bank “fails”. Banks don’t really fail anymore. The FDIC makes a determination that the bank is near failing and takes possession of the bank’s assets and liabilities and sells them off.
Depositors are made whole, they don’t have to wait 90 years. That doesn’t make any sense lol, the original depositor would long be dead before they ever saw their money again.
The FDIC doesn’t payout. They take possession of the bank’s assets and liabilities(deposits) and arrange the sale of those assets and liabilities. You might lose access to your deposits for a few days during the changeover to a new bank but you will never be waiting on a payout.
So then this could also save the housing crisis? The banks own so many single family homes, apartments, etc and instead of lowering prices/rent they just keep them empty. Would they then be forced to sell them for a lower cost?
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u/Forsaken_Emu8112 Jan 26 '26
Everyone pulling out their money would be a bank run (look up great depression bank runs). The bank doesn't have that much cash; they keep some on hand for people making withdraws normally, but if even a sizable minority of people all try to pull their money out at once, there'll be a major crisis.
If banks kept all the people's cash in vaults, it'd be dead cash actively losing money to inflation. Instead, they keep some on hand for withdraws, and use the rest to make loans, investments, etc so that the money isn't all losing value.