This is simply stunning. The FDIC now needs a bailout. Why? Because for over a decade, the banksters, the ones we're throwing trillions of dollars at, didn't pay their premiums to the FDIC. No, really.
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.
I'm speechless. I simply don't know what to say.
UPDATE: I think John Cole says it best:
I'd like to get some car, health, and homeowners insurance like that. I mean, I never have had cancer, have never wrecked my car, and my house has never burned down. Why are they still collecting premiums from me?
Unbelievable. |
