This is pretty exciting news. A story in MarketWatch mentioned that a House Panel has voted 12 to 7 to make the $250,000 FDIC insurance limit permanent. In addition, it would make it retroactive to January 1, 2008. This would certainly help people who lost funds in the ANB Failure in May of 2008 and IndyMac failure of 2008. There were many stories of people being bit by not having POD accounts properly set-up. So this move would help them out. On the other hand, with the FDIC insurance fund already in the red, I wonder what kind of extra burden that will place on the system.

The provision is part of a larger bill to consolidate the Office of Thrift Supervision and Office of Comptroller of the Currency. Now the entire bill will go to the House. If it passes the House, the Senate will vote on it. If it passes and it doesn’t need revisions it will go for signing by President Obama. I’m not sure what else is in the bill, so it may be good to read through it before urging passage, but on the surface it would be helpful.

Even to this day, people are unaware that the current $250,000 limit is temporary and set to expire after 12/31/13. Many people don’t realize the limit is temporary and have been doing long term CDs without paying attention to the maturity dates. So passage would certainly remove confusion.

Certificate of Deposit Rates

-- By Chris Duncan

Posted in Economy