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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: accountclosed who wrote (37788)	11/30/1998 8:39:00 AM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

I don't really have a doomsday scenario, but I'd rather have cash in an FDIC-insured account than credit cards. In the Great Depression, what you wanted was actual cash money. Someone gave one of my grandfathers a strong hint that something drastic was about to happen to all the banks, and he withdrew $500 and put the bills in a safe deposit box. This kept the family comfortably in groceries during the "bank holiday" and the delays that followed in retrieving what were supposed to be demand deposits. I would't go that far any more. But one could easily present a credit card and then hear a BEEP! and be told, "Sorry! The machine won't accept it!" I think any credit card issuer can terminate the card any time. I don't think banks will close and I don't think deposits will be frozen. I certainly don't think that silver and gold coins will suddenly be acceptable as currency. I do think that financial markets will be quite chaotic for a while, that various brokerages and lending institutions will collapse, that stock trading on the Internet might be suspended, and that unemployment will start to rise. And if the Fed keeps allowing the money supply to increase to fight this, inflation will reappear. 10% inflation is better than another Great Depression, however.