Robbing Peter to Pay… Peter?

Who You Callin’ Broke?

from The Wash­ing­ton Times:

The reces­sion has so dev­as­tated the FDIC’s deposit insur­ance fund that the agency has had to take the unprece­dented step of requir­ing banks to pre­pay $45 bil­lion of insur­ance pre­mi­ums by the end of this year in order to replen­ish the FDIC’s cof­fers. The pre­mi­ums would cover the fourth quar­ter of this year and all of 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Is this like bor­row­ing against the equity of your house because hous­ing prices are guar­an­teed to always go up?

Or is this like your land­lord telling you he wants four years rent in advance because he’s going to do these great improvements?

Or is this what the IRS does with with­hold­ing, only even the IRS only takes one year?

What if the bank fails because it gave so much money to pre-pay its FDIC assess­ments and the FDIC uses the bank’s own money to take it over?

Or is this more like what Bon­nie and Clyde used to do?

Living, Political Maneuvers bankrupt, Banks, Bonnie and Clyde, broke, FDIC