Bostom Globe:

Now-needy FDIC collected little in premiums
With fund going strong, banks didn’t pay for decade

By Michael Kranish
Globe Staff / March 11, 2009

WASHINGTON – The federal agency that insures bank deposits, which is asking for emergency powers to borrow up to $500 billion to take over failed banks, is facing a potential major shortfall in part because it collected no insurance premiums from most banks from 1996 to 2006.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures deposits up to $250,000, tried for years to get congressional authority to collect the premiums in case of a looming crisis. But Congress believed that the fund was so well-capitalized – and that bank failures were so infrequent – that there was no need to collect the premiums for a decade, according to banking officials and analysts. [..]

So basically banks didn’t even have to internalize some small portion of their own bailouts.

I blame the Republicans. But of course I’m wrong.

Why AIG?

Glad you asked.

I hate to say I told you so, but…

I told you so.

See in particular Glenn Greenwald’s rundown. He’s been on this since the beginning.

Also, I want to point to a previous post from many moons ago. See? One President does it, and the rest want in on the action, too.

And not just Republican candidates. Also some Democratic ones, including the one that won.

I’m still getting the junk spam crap, Xanga.

Why are you doing this?

tribe.net + social conscience = changents.com.

Their social success game marker is the ‘ripple.’

Linking because they use Drupal and they’re hiring.

This kind of thing is why we have an internet.

I can’t fathom why my last two posts have garnered zero recommendations and only three views between them.

It’s almost as though NO ONE WANTS TO LOOK AT ADS.

I just posted this Kick Flip Skateboard Game for 250 credits. You can earn free credits too!

I have posted this to illustrate why I will now cease to use Xanga.

I just posted this BENADRYL® Pollen Alert widget for 500 credits. You can earn free credits too!

Ok. I don’t know why this ‘blog entry is titled ‘The Economy Is Yummy.’ I guess I lack the focus to come up with a proper title. But here’s my point:

I invest in US Treasury bills, because they’re the safest investment in the known universe. Safer than your bank. If the treasury can’t pay you back, then things are so messed up the money they’d give you back would be worthless anyway.

T-bills = safe. Got it?

Well, there’s a down-side to this safety. 4-week T-bills (my churn of choice) were recently auctioned at 0% interest. This means investors would rather put their money in the totally safe place than the interest-gathering place.

My investment churn is automated by the Treasury web site. I went to check on it and saw ‘Price per 100: 100.’ I thought, ‘Can this be right? Is the web site broken?’ Google gave me the bad news. An interesting tidbit from that news item:

Reflecting high demand, the amount in bids for the four-week bills was four times the amount sold at the auction.

But there’s one thing in all this that makes me feel better: I was doing the right thing before everyone else in the financial system saw that it was the right thing, too. Safety + liquidity. My money is safe, I get a little interest (until lately, that is), and I’m always no more than two weeks away from half of it because of automated time-staggered buys.