Banks Ranked by Total Deposits as of 2007-12-31
The above is the list of banks and their deposits ranked.. as of 31. Dec. 2007.
On the list, there are some names that have no links.. that is because they do not exist any more. They have been "bought" by others and gone bankrupt.
Now Wachovia was taken over (at gun point) by Wells Fargo and Washington Mutal was taken over by JP.Morgan (also at gun point). BOA merged with Myrill.. also at gun point at the time.
At the time that was over 600 billion in deposits. Now we now know that at the time BOA and Citi were also in serious trouble. BOA had eaten Myrill Lynch (with all their toxic assets) and Citi had been heavily lending to consumers for years (god I hated their constant snail mail telling me I could get cheap loans).
So of the top 5 US banks by deposit, all but one were in serious trouble at the end of 2007. Even JP Morgan was in problems because it could not get liquidity as easy as it once could.
Now had all these banks gone belly up, as many on the right were advocating at the time.. who would have bought them? Very few had the funds to do so in the US, and letting non-American banks take over US banks would have been political suicide. The Chinese could have bought out BOA no problem.. as could some other European and Asian banks .. at the time, but politically and legally it is a non starter. So let them go bankrupt says most right wingers.. but would the FDIC have the 2.2 trillion dollars to pay all the depositors? Nope. So you would overnight take 2.2 trillion dollars, peoples life savings, out of the economy... and dont tell me that wont effect the economy.
Now it is of course even worse today
Banks Ranked by Total Deposits
Here BOA, CITI, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo have over 3.5 trillion dollars of deposits, out of a total deposit of an estimated 6 trillion. Fact is the FDIC does not have the money to guarantee the deposits and is basing that guarantee on one thing... the US fed.
Basically.. break up the top 4 US banks. They are even more "too big to fail".