Background:
- Trump’s second term could mean the downfall of the FDIC, CFPB: Here’s what that means for consumers | CNBC
- Senator warns of national security risks after Elon Musk's DOGE granted 'full access' to sensitive Treasury systems | TechCrunch
What prompted this is I logged into my bank this morning to send some bill payments, and the FDIC banner at the top caught my attention. At first it made me laugh because of recent events, but that laugh turned into kind of a nervous chuckle:
I was like "Surely this administration won't fuck with the FDIC" but then read through the articles above, and now I'm not so confident.
Currently, I use a small, local bank. I've never really worried about it because of FDIC protections, but should I move my money out of it to a larger bank? Withdraw it all and stuff it in my mattress?
I'm not freaking out, but I am concerned about this for the first time in my life.
The rational part of me says that if it gets to that point, my money would probably be worthless anyway except for burning it to keep warm.
This is part of why gold is at an all-time high. The other part is inflation.
It's also part of why crypto is also at all-time highs, but that has a lot of other factors as well.
Yeah, I'm definitely not going to trade my real money for phony crypto nonsense. Logistically, gold is a non-starter since I can't actually use that to live.
Basically I'm at the stage where I'm trying to determine if my money is going to remain safe in a small town bank. Like I said, until now, I've had confidence in the safety net the FDIC provides.
LMFAO. “Real money”. Someone still doesn’t understand. You almost get it with the realization of gold but still not quite there.
I'm still on the trusting-the-banks: I have a lot of money in the largest banks in the US, and if they fail, we're all fucked: if BoA and Chase and Citibank collapse, we're all going to back to growing our own food on family plots and you'll want a donkey and 10 acres more than anything else.
To that end, I'm spending a lot of money on what amounts to chickens, seeds, canned/preserved food, and bullets.
I mean, I may not need 5 years of seeds, and what's close to a year's worth of not-great-but-not-starving food stores, and enough ammo to clear out the 100 acre woods, buuuuut if you do need it, better you have it.
Just because gold and crypto have experienced an uptick in their stability metric, relative to their previous standing, doesn't all of a sudden mean they are more stable than the US government. Yes, even in its current teetering form.
Also, right after it's swelled to an all-time high after everyone else has figured it out, is the wrong time to buy. The right time would have been in mid fall last year, before the election, and then if nothing goes wrong you can sell and take a very minor loss. "Time in the market beats timing the market" and all, but if you're going to try to time the market, look forward, not back. Find some scientific or non-software (real world) endeavors, green energy being a big obvious one, outside the US, and put some money in those. They may still lose value during a big US economic collapse, but they'll probably be okay in the long run, and you might be able to catch a big swell as the US implodes and all that motivation that was going to the US looks for other places of residence.