QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Your post of November 16th where you state that the ECB is looking to freeze accounts in a banking crisis, does that mean they will no longer honour the claimed insurance of €100,000 per account?
PH
ANSWER: No. They will not pretend to eliminate that insurance, they just will “suspend” it as a bank holiday. But you gloss over another problem. The insurance of €100,000 will NOT be honoured per account, but PER PERSON. The US FDIC insurance is also per person when you dig deeper. Europe will also change that on a discretionary basis. So taking €1 million euro and spreading among 10 banks does not thereby provide insurance for the whole lot. The same is true in the USA. The ECB is proposing supplementing it with discretionary powers to suspend bank withdrawals. To say that the entire program will be terminated is an exaggeration. Nevertheless, it reflects the realization that the European banking system is in serious trouble. I recommend that Europeans should have a stash of cash, and if you have a lot of cash in your account, put some into dollars in the States before it is too late.
