Greetings all Im a long time reader and I have newly registered to ATS because I finally have something worth contributing. Or so I think. I work as a Supervisor for a chain of banks mainly situated in the Mid West and tonight at 8:30pm we had a meeting about making sure we tell customers we are FDIC approved and explaining to them what this means and to make this a main selling point for opening new accounts. I could just be jumping the gun but this seems odd. My bank caters to mostly low income people with no credit checks and no real questions upon opening accounts as well as illegal aliens. Ive never really thought of telling people about this point in my sales pitch because most people have less than 100,000 in their accounts anyway.

Well we went over some senarios today in a role playing session to calm customers down and let them know their money and Federally backed. Perhaps other banks do this as regular practice, I dont know anyone in the banking industry outside of those I work with and people at other local branches. Perhaps Im crazy but its starting to worry me that we had to do these role play sessions, as did the fact that our branch manager said "things could get ugly real soon..." I hope this doesnt mean my bank is going under, perhaps it does and I should look for another job. Or we're preparing for people to go berserk. Some opinions would be nice. Thanks and Good Night all.

perhaps your banks are changing from the
credit expansion & consumerism model
into a fiscal thrifty and savings oriented type of bank.

like you say, it's all a promotion emphasis,

considering your personal experience ... the role playing episodes (could you elaborate on them actually) .. and your manager talking about it getting real ugly soon..
would you care to share what you, personally, are doing with your finances / investments now?

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Buckle your seat belts kids, kansas is going bye bye.

When are people going to wake up and stop arguing over petty differences. We have to realize that this whole system is going to collapse. Nothing can grow forever. As the old saying goes what goes up, must come down.

Move to a sustainable way of living now so your survival chances are better.

Nature has all the time in the world. We dont.

Blurry

Originally posted by prevenge

considering your personal experience ... the role playing episodes (could you elaborate on them actually) .. and your manager talking about it getting real ugly soon..
would you care to share what you, personally, are doing with your finances / investments now?

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I shouldve taken the script home rather than tossing it out in favor of a box of free pizza but from what I recall it was how to deal with a customer worried about economic failure. We talked about Indy Mac alot and the possibility that other banks who seem stable just arent. We however reported the highest earnings of any bank through Over Draft Fees although I believe this is due to borderline illegal business practices. My manager just said it seemed like things were gonna get ugly because of the economy and his own general state of affairs. I generally dont take what he says worth a grain of salt more so Im looking at these little exercises. We also went over today how to show people how to maximize the security of their money, such as loop holes in how the FDIC secures money and how to get 100,000 thousand secured one way and stack this insurance up to 1.5 million for an individual or 1.7 million for a family.

Personally what Im doing with my finances is absolutely nothing, I have a BFA in Game Design and Im paying off a 48,000$ student loan at bone crushing interests and not getting a damn thing out of it. My school took a shotgun approach at teaching where I know how to do alot of things fairly but nothing very good or amazing, thus Im pretty useless to the field. I personally fell into the world of banking and found I liked it, its very cut and clear.

Back to the meat of things though, here's something I found very interesting today, a woman deposited 4800$ in cash over a 6 month period and now her assets are frozen because she wanted to withdraw 4000 today. I couldnt give her a straight answer on why as our Corp office was closed and my RM was rather useless. This seems to be happening more and more, also the bank shifted from a name based account search to one using SSNs and alot of the illegals who dont have their account number and relied on a name search are having their accounts lay dormant and eventually purged. What does this mean? I honestly dont know the money just disapears into the abyss and finding all info that it was ever there is difficult. I kinda wonder if they're doing this and reporting it earnings to fluff the stocks before a huge fall. I could be looking to deep into it but I pride myself on reading between the lines and being prepared.

The FDIC is very much like the Dooms Day Device in Dr Strangelove.

This may sound a little odd at first, but bare with me for a moment.


The Russians had not told the US about the doomsday device, and the argument was made that the doomsday device made no sense unless you told people about it. A device which destroys everyone, if anyone attacks you makes no sense if you do not tell people about it first! It is supposed to be a deterrent, and how can it deter people if they do not know about it?

Well the FDIC is also a deterrent, if people do not know about it, how can it deter them?

No it cannot cover everyone's deposits, It was never intended to. That is not the purpose. It is a to deter runs on the banking system, not to insure deposits, the insurance is just a required artifact of the deterrant.

You are mistaking who it is there to protect. It is there to protect banks.
Not to guarantee their survival, but as a low cost hedge against risk.