29 September, 2007 | Leave a Comment

This morning I logged onto the website of my American bank, only to discover that the U.S. federal government shut it down yesterday. Talk about panic! Netbank is an internet bank, so there can be no “run” on the bank as we saw with Northern Rock here in the UK a few weeks ago. From the AP: “NetBank Inc., an online bank with $2.5 billion in assets, was shut down by the government on Friday because of an excessive level of mortgage defaults. It was the largest savings and loan failure since the tail end of the industry’s crisis more than 14 years ago.”

You put your money in the bank and you always assume it’ll be there. Guess not. I feel a bit shaken, even though the FDIC assures us that our money is insured up to $100K. I probably don’t need to point out that I don’t have anywhere near $100K in the bank, though I feel bad for those that do. From the AP: “‘Customers of NetBank should have confidence and security knowing that they will have access to their insured funds in a timely and orderly manner,’ FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said in a prepared statement.”

I’m really bummed, because I loved Netbank. No account fees. No ATM fees, even abroad! It was fabulous and perfect for people living overseas. Right now we can only use our debit cards and can’t get into our accounts to transfer money out. I never expected to find myself in this situation, but thank goodness we have the FDIC to insure our deposits. Perhaps from now on I’ll just put my money under the mattress…

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1. Aldor Says:

   September 30th, 2007 at 9:32 am

   … And so, what it will happening ?

2. Anglofille Says:

   September 30th, 2007 at 1:26 pm

   Our accounts are being transferred to a new bank tonight. That’s all I know so far!

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