Theses Banks Are Wavering........John Browne reported the following in his article, "The Road To Bank Nationalization" which appeared under the commentary section of the kitco.com's main webpage today:
"Citi and Bank of America, two of the three most important money market banks are technically insolvent. Yet, each has received $45 billion in TARP funds.
These two banks have total exposure of some $78 trillion to derivatives. Most importantly, they have almost $6 trillion of exposure to highly toxic Credit Default Swaps. Even JP Morgan has more than $9 trillion of exposure to these assets."
In commentaries today on CNBC there wasn't any mention of BOA's exposure to these "weapons of mass destruction." One commentator stated that he liked BOA because of their business plan and their vast opportunities that were available to them now by owning Merrill Lynch. My question is, does the drivatives exposure that BOA bought with Merrill ranging from $100 billion to $200 billion not fit into their future equation somewhere? How about the trillions of exposure to them in their main manure pile? To me, BOA could be for comparison impact purposes only about the same as a very successful beach restaurant standing on pilings in the sand that are rotting while no one wants to address the out of sight hidden problem because it might be bad for business.
I have spoken to many people who have their savings in big banks and they all tell me the same, "the FDIC insures checking and savings accounts up to $250,000 and why should I worry?" My question is, what does FDIC insurance mean? The only thing I would be interested in is, does it say anywhere that in case of massive bank failures I would I still be able to get my cash back on demand? I'm afraid it's not going to work that way if the banking system gets frozen. More than likely, you'll get an IOU of sorts that will continue paying interest on a so-called Treasury instrument that may or may not mature as fast as you would like. If your funds are hung-up in the system and a big international devaluation takes place against the Dollar because of a banking crisis or whatever, you more than likely will have to suffer the consequences of wealth destruction.
Why risk your life savings in some of these big troubled banks when owning gold is insurance of the highest order and not attached to ANY form of liabilities?